Doug,

>Not until some time next year.

I'll be keeping my eyes open...

>Why not just validate the entire database then? It really won't take that long. The speed of the SDT Database Explorer loading is related to loading objects in the TreeView, not the validation of the database.

Yes, you are right...by my calculations, the validation takes about 5 or 6 minutes, then SDT was taking another 5 to open...if I just use the programmatic validation, it would be faster.

>Well, I should put a caveat on that. I've come across situations where folks have huge tables (say hundred of thousands or even millions of records) and have views on those tables. Even though we open views NODATA, an article that Chris Probst wrote in FoxPro Advisor a few months back showed that even when a view is opened NODATA, under some circumstances, you'll still get hundreds of megabytes of data transferred from the server to the workstation, which obviously takes a long time. So, if this is what you're encountering, this might be the cause of the slowdown in the SDT Database Explorer, and would also make validation slow.

Wow, that's interesting...the database in development is pretty empty, so I don't think that is the problem...the 222 views are what it has to wade through I think...

>However, that said, validation is still more of a task that you start, let it run in the background while you do something else, then come back to when it's done. If you're not going to use the visual part of SDT, why bother keeping the meta data updated until you're ready to test or ship the app? So, you do one validation, even though the developers have been making lots of changes to the structures over time.

True, validation is only needed when some sort of deployment takes place, but that is the kicker for us right now...we update our test system very often (probably couple times a week) so our users can keep up on testing and giving us feedback. I would at least have to do the validation before each of those installs. It really wouldn't be bad, and like you said, I can run it in one spot and work in a whole different instance of VFP if I want...

At this point we have opted to spend our money (well, a part of the SDT money on a recovery tool (Abri's Recover) and just go with my reindexer...as I said, I will be keeping up with tool developments, and SDT is one I will be watching...

Thanks,
Joe Kaufman