11. Never try to create persistant relationships between remote views

>Hi All,
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>Jim's PANDA post about public variables and the fact that I have spent some mentoring time lately compels me to write this list:
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Don't use PUBLIC variables. They're hard to track down and not good design. Use object methods. This is Jim's mantra and a good one.
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Don't use Formsets. Formsets suck. Formsets are the black holes of VFP objects; hard to manage and impossible to escape once you've used them.
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Don't overload your Form.Refresh. Too much logic in Form.Refresh slows down an app considerably. Especially try to avoid requerying or SCAN type ops in Refresh.
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Use type and object prefixes! It's not that hard to get in the habit of and it makes your code a helluva lot readable.
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Forget SET FILTER. SET FILTER can slow down your app much worse than a parameterized view.
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Don't forget your SETs. Remember to set your SETS in the BeforeOpenTables event of a DataEnvironment when a form uses a Private Datasession.
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Parameterized views require parameters! If the parameter is a Form property, then the view will error on opening unless you've set NoDataOnLoad for the cursor to .T. You can requery in Form.Init to get the proper rows.
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All tables should have primary keys! All of them. No exceptions to this rule. None. Ever. For any reason.
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Avoid code repetition. If Apply and OK buttons both save code, then they should call a common method to save.
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Consistancy! Think long and hard about right-click and dbl-click behaviors for controls. Be prepared to explain why clicks act differently for different instances of the same control type. DOCUMENT those differences with ToolTips.
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>There are doubtlessly a gazillion other no-no's.........

--Todd Sherman
-Wake Up! Smell the Coffee!