? about client-server. (What kind of client-ware to use.)

My company is starting to develope client-server software using informix as the database server. Since the clients are supposed to be on macintoshes we are trying out 4th Dimension as client-ware (since it was used in some products before) using Pacer-DAL as middle-ware. Having fiddled with this a little bit there have come up some questions about what C-S is supposed to do and what is natural procedure in manipulating data on the client: (This is written without the 'DAL programmers reference' book that I ordered before July 18th, but havent gotten as yet.) When fetching data to the client for delete or update (more than 1 row at a time), is it natural that the client stores the data in tables while manipu- lating, and then when the operation is over, that the data is deleted from the client tables row by row (instead of using f.ex. temp tables which you can drop in an instant)? (This is what I seem to have to do with 4D.) Is it natural to use database software (that is build originally to be a standalone database) as a client to a remote database? How does client-ware (built to function as such) handle storage of data on the client side? Any suggestions, opinions, recommedation for reading material or questions will be appreciated. Please reply to gaukur@rhi.hi.is Kristjan Gaukur Kristjansson.