>Hi John,
>Thanks for the input with my rambling brain, you and BOb both share my same thoughts on all this. So let me re-phrase my question(s). Is there anyone with experience developing apps with business rules stored in table? The article didn't seem to show any downside to this approach, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Also, if I do put my validation into a table instead of the dbc, how can let users use a M$ Office tool for custom query and reporting tasks? Some sort of Automation Server?

Rox,

The current project I am working on will have table based validation/rules. However, we are still not sure if we will have the middle tier, or back end check the rules.

If it is dones in the middle tier, we can verify either after the textbox loses focus OR on a save... however, if it is fired from .DBC or SQL rules, then the user could have put invalid data into a field and won't know about it until they hit save.

Of course, this is the way most server driven Web based business aps work, but for normal biz aps, user are used to more immediate feedback.

Once we decide how to handle it, perhaps we will let you know.

One thought was to have the rules in stored procedures called from the rules, but have the rules check somehow to see if a middle tier object is saving it.

I admit I don't know how to do that. If I was two tier I could just do...

if vartype(goApp) == "O"
* validation was done prior to save
return .t.
endif

* do validation
lRetVal = createobjectex('MyServer.Validation',cTable,cField,xValue)

return lRetVal

********************
No sure how to handle it with three tier.

BOb