Yeah I've had the same problem in the past before - on several occasions as matter of fact. Interestingly - several times I ran across such a mess it was a VPM based application - how ironic.
Anway I read some of the responses you've got and it looks like you've got some good advice here. I would be certain to clue the customer into what you're finding - and whatever you do - do NOT go flat-rate on anything - do it all hourly and let them know that these fixes could cost more $ that usual and take more time due to more extensive testing will be required. Since the database was designed so poorly it really makes fixing the thing properly a real pain in the neck - depending upon how many screens and prgs there are it might be possible to pick the thing apart and normalize the database a little bit at a time as bugs pop up - then over time the app would be in better shape.

I wonder somtimes about the VPM developers. I'm sure there are some good ones - but it seems like most of the ones I've met were not really too keen with their Visual Foxpro skills and depended heavly on VPM's wizards to do things...and a lot of the VPM gizmos seem (or did last time I looked at it) to be rather ridicilious to - like they couldn't figure out the proper way to get comboboxes to work so you got a textbox and a button with some other stupid control under it??? And then it didn't use the VFP DBC they tried to use their own instead - etc etc etc. I dunno - its like a RAD tool - not a true framework and it looked to me if you wanted to do anything really complicated or needed to 'step outside the box' or were a highly skilled VFP developer then VPM wasn't the ideal choice.
So what it sounds like to me is you ended up with an app that was written by someone that really didn't know VFP very well and then used VPM's RAD wizards to write most of it and thus you ended up with a pile of junk that you now have to try to debug...bummer!

At this stage - if they don't wanna rewrite - every time you make a change- test test test test. gee what fun....

>Hi everybody,
>
>I'm working with the existing application. The more I look at it, the more I don't understand.
>
>1. There are millions of public variables in all the places
>
>2. Almost each form tries to switch datasession using SET DATASESSION command
>
>3. There is lots of code in all the places (Init, Load, Activate, Show, valid of textboxes / gotfocus, etc.)
>
>4. The code uses SET FILTER command lots of times
>
>5. In one of the table we have about 20 or more indexes. About half of them use the exact same index expression, but different tag name.
>
>6. The application is based on the VPM framework
>
>7. The database is completely de-normalized / relations are based on names.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>No wonder this application behaves unpredictable. However, how I'm supposed to fix problems / bugs with it? If I try to change one little piece of code, I would not know what is affected - results of my change could be.
>
>BTW, when I ran this application in VPME and checked developer's info, I found the name of the developer. I searched VPM Newsgroup and found several of his questions there few years ago. The questions all seem to be OK.
>
>I'm just wondering how such applications can be written and more importantly - maintained later.