>Rich,
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>See also MySQL and Memo Fields Thread #1048555 and Re: Retrieve MySQL Longtext Data Thread #1327816 Message #1327818
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>
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>>I'm not sure how CAST would work even if VFP 9. It's something I would do after the cursor has been downloaded. I can fudge the same thing in VFP 8 if I need to.
>>
>>Thanks for your help......Rich

The basic question is how to force MySql to return a memo field regardless of the amount of data actually in the field. TEXT didn't work, it created a field based upon the max length of the data field. If 255+ I got a MEMO. If shorter I got a CHAR and it could have been with length of 0. What we found is that setting the field width as VARCHAR(len) would always return a MEMO field as long as (len) was 255+. I don't know what a (len) of 10K (3K could be a reasonable estimate of what might actually be entered) would do to performance or data storage.

Before we found that, however, I wrote a utility that would take the cursor and, in essense, CAST all the fields we needed to be MEMO. There were no problems getting the data back into MySql. It's in place and working so we've moved onto the next step. Development time is short, so we'll continue with this satisfactory solution and maybe investigate a "better" one at a later date.

Thanks for asking and thanks for your help. I think the user group mentioned in your referenced thread will prove useful.