>>In the first case having all of the forms related to a single DS seems much more efficient.
>>
>>Peter
>
>There's no reason you can't have it both ways. Use default & private DSs where each make the best sense. I just wanted to point out that a general purpose framework should support multiple form instantiation. I imagine that could somehow be supported through the default DS, but it would be a lot of work.


Forms sets share a DS. I haven't used them and it seems like they don't get recommended much anymore. But perhaps that would be a way to go when I do want the data minipulations made in one form to be visable in the other forms.

Let me be a little more specific. I have an account form that creates and displays ACCNTS records and an owners form that creates and displays OWNERS records. Accounts can have multiple owners and owners can own more than one account. You can pick a specific owner on the account form. If you then go to the owners forms (by pressing a button or hot key on the ACCNTS form) you see that owner along with his address, phone numbers, email addresses, etc.

This seems so natural that I can't imagine why anyone would want it to be any other way. Yet I had to program this in because the two forms have different DS.

Also since I keep all of my main forms live after instantiation for speed reasons that means I can have 8 or more DS all live at the same time. I worry about that.

I also wonder about multiple instantiations of the same form. My target screen is 800 x 600 and my forms take up most of that. How do people usefully display more than one form at a time? I have provided a way that people can select just a few records to process at a time. The page-up and page-down keys then roll back and forth between the desired records, each fully viewable in turn. This seems more more practical than trying to display two records at the same time in two separate form instantiations.

Peter