Eric,

>My boss (also a good friend of mine so I can speak freely to him) believes it is not a good idea to use the foxpro database designer to create links and referential integrity constraints on tables. He says that it is more trouble than it's worth. He would rather use the tables the way they were used in Foxpro 2.6, all free tables. He also think it is better to code the referential integrity in the application.

>My feeling is that he is mistaken. What is the general opinion on the issue? Do the VFP programmers use the database designer? What are the advantages and/or inconvenients that I might be missing?

Personally I've found the RI builder in VFP pretty usefull. However, you've got to take care of the "trigger failed" messages or use TABLEUPDATE(2,...,...). Further deletes, insert and replacements are pretty slower than without RI. I came with a solution to build my own RI builder which is far faster than the standard one.

Walter,