>If you have a updateable view based on two tables (or n tables), is there any way to tell/force the order in which the tables are updated?

What I've seen is that it has to do with the order the tables were joined in the cursor. So if you have table1 join table2, table1 updates first, then table2. If you change the select to table2 join table1, table2 should be updated first, then table1.

In the select statement of a view into VFP data, you can include the FORCE argument to the FROM clause to force the join in the order you have specified.
You would have to create the view in code and not the view designer in order to do this.