>>>Once my application is installed and running at a customer site, what is the best way to handle changes to the .dbc?
>>>
>>>1. Adding new tables or views
>>>
>>>2. Modifying/adding/deleting fields in a table or view
>>>
>>>Thanks in advance for all thoughts and suggestions.
>>>
>>>Mat
>>
>>Take a look at StoneField Database Toolkit... it has a feature that allows you to ship a new .DBC and meta data and then you call the UPDATE() function and the tables will be updated as needed.
>>
>>www.stonefield.com
>>
>>BOb
>
>I too am using Stonefield, and highly recommend it. That's ALL I bought it for, although it will do a lot of other things.
>
>It is easy to integrate into an existing app - that's what I did. It makes like easy. You send the SDT meta-tables and the DBC to your clients, and it will update everything. It is quite powerful, and not at all hard to learn.
>
>In my app, at startup, I have it check if updates are needed, and then it will apply them automatically.
>
>If you go this route, E-mail me and I can give you some tips and maybe some sample code.
>
>larry

FWIW: I use Stonefield also, and everything Larry says is true. Besides data updates, it provides excellent tools to Reindex and Repair tables, and you can do some really awesome stuff with the data dictionary. I have created a set of controls that auto-populate the caption, tool tip, status bar, and popup help text from info stored in the dictionary. I would say this was the best $300 bucks I ever spent

Rob