Hi Mark,

I presume you: "So as long as all values are the same width as the field, updates will succeed?"

>The only way I see it working is if the length of the value is always the same as the width of the field. The problem arises in that spaces are added to pad the width to match the width of the field. When VFP updates, it will compare "123" [VFP side] to "123 " [Oracle side] and get FALSE [returns an update conflict error]. This defeats the purpose of a varchar field.
>

Erik and Mark,

Thanks for the tips on memes and textboxes. I discussed with my client the changes that I would have to make to the VFP interface to get change the datasource from a character field to a memo field. In the short term, my client wants to move ahead and is willing to use varchar2 fields that are always padded to their maximum lenght.

The current application is in MS SQL server with a VFP front end. We are migrating the the tables to a already established Oracle database. We want to use the same VFP front end, which is not difficult since I'm using remote views. The Oracle dba choose varchar2 for these character fields and suggested that I rtrim the character fields as the data was uploaded into Oracle. It was with the rtrim that my update problems began.

The original database began as a FoxPro for DOS, then migrated to FPW, then to MS SQL Server and finally to Oracle. There was not much thought give to a data model in its early days. If we started now we would probably have numeric keys.

Thanks for your input. We can still move ahead with what we have and it will give us some time to think about the data model.

Paul