David,

>I haven't started using views yet, much less parameterized ones, but I'm guessing that in the above, lnVeiwParameter is some variable that's referenced in a SELECT-SQL statement that produces "TheView".

Yes it is, you specify the parameter by putting a ? in front of it. There's a simple example over on my website if you want to take a look.

>I did solve the problem by using a Query of the table to produce a temporary cursor whose records I could then count. I think this is what your getting at, right?

The view will be a cursor of the records that meet the selection criteria. So it's like running a SELECT statement. SET FILTER is sooooo 2.x, Views are better *s*

>(Not sure what you meant by operating "outside" the environment...)

Meaning that VFP will throw out-of-scope kinds of errors when you would not expect it to.