Hello Nancy,

Thanks for your response and suggestions. Actually there are Parent, Child relationships in this app. Employees(Staff) to Task orders is a one to many and Patient to Task Order is one to many. Since Task Orders contain both Patient and Employee data, I can connect all Employees to the Patients they care for and of course the Patients to the Employees assigned to them.

The orignal app was designed several years ago in WFP 2.6/ProMatrix. I had some difficulties with a very large table spread over multiple forms. Also my client is constantly adding things(fields etc.) to the system. No problem - thats how we make our money. But in FP 2.6/ProMatrix and/or VFP/ProMatrix splitting data tables means redoing all the screens and any reports/labels using aliases. Ouch!

It takes 50 fields just for the skills and other required health data for each Employee(5 skills, expire dates, areas in which they are valid, registration numbers), dates of criminal checks, First Aid, CPR, Physicals, Languages spoken etc. All unique to the each employee. Same situation for Preferences: what hours will he/she work for each shift for each day/holidays with what limitations for each - "have to pick up my kids at 3:pm", "No Dogs" etc.

One would say that the app requirements were not well specified originally. One would be absolutly correct. But when you are working with a three man/women shop and manager/owner has little/no time to spend with you and is not computer literate and needs the app up and running in almost any form in 90 days. You take what they now have in paper form, spend minimum time with client and get tables/screens for them to start capturing data.

I have a very similar app for Dental Employees. Only three tables: Dentists, Temporary Staff to be assigned and Task Orders. Just skills and prefered areas to work. No expire dates, registration numbers, etc.

These are my own personal contracts - part time.

Fortunately I don't have to work that way at my day job - as a consultant to a little commuication company - MCI or Dept Labor. All VFP 5/6 apps.

Incidentally I'm rewriting all my personal apps in VFP 6.0 without a predefined framework and have several in production.

I'm sure that is more than you wanted to or needed to know. No need to respond.

But didn't I read that VFP prefered long narrow tables to short wide ones or was that just SQL Server? Seriously?

Thanks again.

Regards,

Paige