You can preset the control source to the cursors fields, but you will still end up just entering the control sources manually.

I think its better to set all your control sources manually in the init even of your form, so its much easier to find and change the control sources later on.

You might be able to create the cursor at design time and use that as in your data session, although I haven't really used the data session in a long time so it might not work with cursors.

About your field length problem what data type did you set your field in MySQL database?