>Can anyone tell me how i can programmatically compare two table structures to ensure that they are the exact same...?

If the tables are empty, one way would be:

SELECT table1
SCATTER NAME oTable1

SELECT table2
SCATTER NAME oTable2

? COMPOBJ( oTable1, oTable2 )

The reason they need to be empty is because if they have different values it will return .F. Otherwise, if everything is the same, returns .T.
HTH,
John