>How safe is to associate a history file with a patient record in a dfb ?
>
>Memo or child table or memo field
>( text fields in the same record seems safe but limited)
>
>However if I am considering write the history of the patient in a child table
>
>Is there great chances of corruption and history exchange among clientes ?
>
>This is the first time that I came across with such a critical software
>
>I would like to here for your experiences and ways to create tables to
>such critical software

You may find that data security (controlling who has access to the data) is an important criterion. Data security is easier to achieve with an RDBMS back-end. There are some good free ones like PostgreSQL, MySQL and even the free SQL Server Express (the latter if your databases are not too large or require high performance).

RDBMSs are usually more fault-tolerant than VFP databases/tables, and there are usually fewer points of failure with an RDBMS:

- with VFP databases/tables, a crash at any workstation, or network failure at any connection can cause data corruption

- data integrity of RDBMSs is generally not affected by workstation or network failures

There is little reason to use native VFP databases/tables for "critical" data when there are good, free RDBMSs available.