I appreciate your help, Erik.

I am trying to set things up (at the framework level) to make sound 3-tier development easy. Since I find Visual MaxFrame Professional most complete, I am trying to add business objects to it so validation doesn't happen in the UI.

>So if one atomic piece of code needs to validate a record, it has to instanciate a global object that instantiates every business object in the project? Why not make the business object atomic so you can just use one if you only need one?

The reason to add bizobjs to a container is to allow single point generic calls in the framework without adding bizobjs to form, as a framework I saw does. Would appreciate other suggestions.

Agree that one should be a able to instantiate a single bizobj to consult it.

>I think you want to stay away from passing a control as a parameter. What happens when you want to use these business objects from a web page, or an Excel spreadsheet? You would have no controls to pass.

Since control as parameter is practical within a VFP app, how about allowing either a control or Table/Field/Value as parameters?

>Agian, if you're going to go so far as to create individual business objects, why not place record and field validation code directly in the methods of objects? I still don't understand the proposed advantage of storing code in tables.

You are correct. Forget validations in a table.

>> I am trying to do it in a way that is practical for my programming style (it leans towards code).
>
>I program using code too. :-)

Funny. I meant I find it easier when you see all methods of an object in a single prg instead of hidden in a vcx.

>
>BTW- you might check out some of the object oriented frameworks out there for ideas on how to implement business objects that will be usable from most any scenario. And check out Markus Egger's OOP book.

So far I have examined MereMortals, CodeMine and MaxFrame.

Thanks again.

Alex