>This is a general question about interface design when using C/S. I posed it several times on the UT but so far I didn't get much answer to it :
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Yes.. I agree with Mike... the main difference between Client Server Client and a VFP Local ap is that picklist/grids/list should all come up empty, and the user should have to put some type of criteria to find the customer.

Aother thing you want to do is in addition to limiting depth, limit width. For example... if you have a Customer pick list... only select those fields needed to identify the Customer to the User and to the ap. I call this a Proxy View... I have a proxy view for almost every CRUD view.

Proxy...

SELECT CustID, FirstName, LastName FROM Customers WHERE 'whatever criteria your user put in'

SQL Pass Thru is commonly used for LookUps/PickLists and Validations. An SQL class that builds the SQL statment based on a few collections that you populate comes in handy.

So your CRUD view would be...

SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE CustID = ?vp_custID

You would populate vp_custId from the Proxy cursor record that the user selected.

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As a rule, I also have some tables that I just get all records... I know that these tables will never be over a hundred records or so.

Also, as mike said... In my ap, I have an Employee List (proxy info only) that I bring accross the FULL record set... but, then I always keep that data. I need to do this since the users are used to navigating up and down the users record set, and also seeing filtered views... It was more efficient to pull all the records once and do client side sorting and filtering.

Of course, if we get a user with more than 4000 employees, we may rethink this, but I still think it is the best decision, since we are pulling only proxy info.

HTH,
BOb