I love them (most of the time). In the OLD days before Visual Foxpro you had to open and close your tables manually (write code to open them). They had this CREATE ENVIRONMENT command that did the same thing but it was cluddgy. There are a lot of benefits, but some of my favorite ones are;

1. If I want to open multiple instances of the Form the DE (DataEnvironment) has gotta be Private (as far as I know).

2. The form is encapsulated with it's own data. No manual opening and closing required.

3. Cleaner design and debugging.

Ask Ed and Mike, they probably have a more expert view.

Bill