>I am a new VFP user and still overwelmed by the many options. As I understand things, VFP provides record & table data validation; however, VFP controls the data validation timing and messages. I would like to have maximum control like I had in FP2.6. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

You still have all the features and power you had with previous version. The DBC is just something that was added and all other previous features are still in there. Which mean, at the form level, you can still apply your own validations before the DBC valiations takes place.