>I don't like the idea of troubling the user to add child record shown in the samples. Therefore, I use AllowAddNew=.T. in my child grid. To maintain the 1-many relationship, I use a surrogated key. My question is: what is the best time to update the surrogated key to the child table so that the 1-many relationship is kept. I have to update the key some time after VFP automatically append a record, right?
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>I also read that we can use a denormalize view for the 1-many form, ie. an updateable view of master-detail. Is that a better way? Any disadvantage?

You should add the surrogate Foreign Key to your child record as soon as you can after the program does the Append Blank. If you can use INSERT instead, then you can add the foreign key at the same time as you add the new record. This way you never 'lose' the child record from it's parent.

I do not like using a denormalized parent/child view because you have parent information on every record. If you are ONLY editing the child data, this is not a problem. If your user is editing parent data then you could have problems with conflicting data.

Barbara