Robert,

Views are really to be used when your back end data is in SQL Server or Oracle. If you haven't worked with those two, you won't realize what a pain the the butt the data conversion is between VFP and native SQL data (especially in dealing with DATE and LOGICAL data types).

Select statements have to be formatted completely different from native VFP Selects. Views do the dirty work for you in the background. They automatically convert SQL data types to native VFP data types and visa versa in the background. I don't think most programmers realize what lengths the VFP team went to for the view capability to work.

This means you can use native VFP commands on SQL Server data once your view is created. Using a view on a native table has almost no benefits, except the example I gave you before in generating an updatable select statement.