Hi Bob,

>I never use a DE on a form or a report. The downside is I don't have a picklist of fields to choose form when designing.

This is not a downside. A different mindframe is required though. When designing controls for a business object, you don't have to start within the business object. Start from a form, add the view to the data environment, change the alias to v_YourView and drop the controls on the form. Do your settings and copy them. Now add them to the business object.