>What is the general consensus on using the DBC (data dictionary) for use in "customizing" an application? What are some general experiences with distributing the DBC outside of the EXE?
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>FYI: Our company has a vertical market application with approx 600 nationwide users, written in Foxpro 2.5 (Dos) and FoxExpress. Currently, our data dictionary is built into the EXE, which does not allow us to customize it for any one particular user. If a user wants a simple field name/description change it is usually declined. Other types of custom requests require the use of a secondary setup file to store the change and a lot of "if/else" and "do case" programming.

Depends on what you want you or the end-user to be able to do. I do not include the DBC in the APP/EXE because I do not want it to be read-only. If I need to make a change to the DBC or one of the tables in the DB, all I have to do is provide the appropriate files (DBC, DCT, DCX, etc.) along with all the Stonefield meta data files, then perform the SDT method to update the DB. Stonefield then handles all the table structure and DB modifications for me. This is a beautiful thing. Unles the end user is totally inept and has destructive tendencies any way, this has been a fool proof way for me to provide DB/Table changes to my users.