>>>>>>Hi,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I looked at the VFP 9 help but the explanation of Access method is not easily understood. Could someone explain the purpose, the use, and advantages of using the Access Method (e.g. something_Access).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>TIA
>>>>>
>>>>>Tamar explains it well in this article: http://www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com/Articles/Put%20Access%20methods%20to%20work.pdf
>>>>>And this is one of Doug's articles: http://doughennig.com/Papers/Pub/AccessAssign.pdf
>>>>
>>>>Thank you, Tore.
>>>
>>>You're welcome.
>>>
>>>Just to give you one sample. I use business classes for all my tables. For each field I have access methods, which all are something like this:
>>>

>>>*Myfield_access
>>>Return Evaluate(Myfield)
>>>

>>>So when I want to read this field value, I simply call MyClass.MyField.
>>>
>>>Likewise, I have an "opposite" method Myfield_assign which I use to change the field value.
>>
>>Your example is much easier to read than many pages of an article. Thank you.
>>I have to follow with a very newbie question.
>>How is your Myfield_access different from assigning the value of the field to a property and getting the value from a property directly?
>
>The property Myfield in a way is this property you mention. It hides all the logic necessary to read and write to the table.
>
>Another sample is a business class for contact information. You have a property for first name, middle name, last name and full name. The three first have access methods to read the corresponding field values from the contact info table, using Evaluate(). The property FullName contains no value, instead it contains this code:
>

>*FullName_access
>lcReturn = Alltrim(This.firstname) + ' '
>If !Empty(This.middlename
>   m.lcReturn = m.lcReturn + Alltrim(This.middlename) + ' '
>Endif
>m.lcReturn = m.lcReturn + Alltrim(This.lastname)
>Return m.lcReturn

>
>One last comment: I really encourage you to read the two documents, assign and access methods can make your life so much easier.

Thank you, I will read the documents. But as far as "making my life easier", I am not so sure :)