>>>>That's a good question. The command is
>>>>

>>>>insert into tiplog (tip_id,employee,changedate,changetable,changefield,oldvalue,newvalue) values ;
>>>>(lnTIP_ID,employee,time(),tcAlias,lcFieldName,alltrim(transform(oldval(lcFieldName))),alltrim(transform(evaluate(lcFieldName))))
>>>>

>>>>tiplog is a plain vanilla dbf living in the dbc. There are no triggers in it or other relations, or relational integrity. So how could there be another table involved? Does multilocks on mandate buffering be enabled?
>>>
>>>I think it's the other way around, can't have table buffering (only record) with multilocks off. Also checked that oldval() doesn't error out when buffering is off - and it doesn't.
>>>
>>>If this is the audit log table... is then maybe the table which is audited to blame for the error?
>>
>>You are correct, this is the audit log. The table being audited has buffering set to 3, as do all of the buffered tables.
>
>I think I've exhausted my telepathic capabilities with this :). IOW, I've run out of clues. Event and coverage logging maybe?

Thanks to all of you who pondered this question. As it turns out the problem was not with buffering at all. The VFP error message was totally misleading. The problem was with the INSERT command which had some errors in the data types that were being inserted. My apologies for the unanswerable question. Hopefully MS will provide better clues in the future.