When developing applications, I often use computer assigned unique keys to link files. These foreign keys are never seen by the user. I need a control that will present the user with a field from a related table that is not the unique link but the control needs to store the unique link in the "control source." My plan is to maintain a relationship to the foreign key table that is based on link but to present records from the foreign key table sorted on whatever field the user will see for selection. The 'selection' field will also need to be displayed after it is entered on the form and will need to refresh as the user changes records, hence the control must get its display value from the related table and must be compatible with a relation to that table that is based on the link field.

At first dropdown style combo boxes looked perfect. But there were some quirks with them and the lists presented by these controls appear to be memory resident which makes them way to slow for working with large files.

** It appears that VFP provides no direct alternative. Has somebody developed something like this for foreign key entry??? **