Hi,

I am working on converting my application to work with either VFP or SQL Server. I have done conversion of several forms/tables and so far all worked well. Until I came across the following issue. Let me describe briefly (simplified) my design approach.

Table Maintenance Form.
Form calls a BIZ tier that calls DA tier that retrieves all or certain number of records from the database table. This is based on the table name property. For example, property name is TABLE_NAME. If the value is "MYTABLE", the records from this table are retrieve into a cursor. The form controls then are bound to the cursor. I use SPT method of calling either VFP or SQL Server. No CursorAdapter.

The above approached worked well on several tables. But now I need to convert two tables/forms that include one or two fields from another table. For example. Table MYTALBE has field FIELD1 that has a foreign field in another table and I need to include in the cursor one or more fields from the related/foreign table. Therefore, now instead of SQL Select having only FROM it has to have LEFT JOIN clause with one or more fields. I am trying to create an approach that will be "standard" for future tables/forms.

The way I thought of doing it is to add a property something like "FOREIGN_TABLE" where the related table name is specified and then to have a property "FT_FIELDS" where a string of fields from the foreign table to be retrieved. Therefore, if these two properties are empty, the code will work as before. If these properties have entries, the code will incorporate this foreign table and fields in the SQL Select.

My question is, do you think the above approach is reasonable? Can you think of a better method/approach?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.