Larry:

The indexing thing you suggested got me on the right track. It turned out to be simple:

set relation to alltr(str(pk_parent)) into child
child index: alltr(str(fk_parent)) + lastname

Relation stays intact and child records are ordered on last name. Cool.

>>What is "excessive"?
I'm talking mostly small data sets, like an invoice and its associated line items. For this, making an extra trip to the server each time you change records in the parent would be excessive. I perfer to bring down the data then relate the tables.

Charlie