Thanks Mike.

I'll try the ODBC method to see if symptom goes away in "production" stuff.

"Stuff" = periodic copy of data from LAN to DMZ where the "establishment" of the SQL connection must be performed from the LAN side. Then I must "push" data to DMZ side of firewall. I usually "pull" using OpenRowSet, and I've never had a problem. Since I must "push" in this case, I've got to create the remote table 1st, then INSERT data into it, then remotely manipulate it.