Hi all

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction for displaying and validating foreign data that is based on a surrogate key.

All of the tables in the system that I'm working on have hidden primary keys. All foreign keys obviously point to the surrogate primary key of the foreign file.

I need to know how best to display a field from the foreign file, based on the surrogate value. At the moment we are using combo boxes, but these can be slow, especially if there is a lot of data. Also, there are occasions where the foreign key needs to be a subset of the possible values, making for a potentially complex SQL statement.

Has anyone got a strategy for using text boxes to do this? The solution needs to work in grids as well.

PS Using VFP 5.0a

Thanks for your time,