Hi!

What you're saying is a way of thinking of programmer/analist. Think about user. Certain users want data and do not aware really where data reside and how data organized internally. So they make a report with fields to design and represent WHICH data they want to see. HOW get these data - they do not know, and learning how to get these data is a hard thing for them. That is why report created BEFORE data query. Its programmer thinking that database is first, then query, then representing of result. For users it completely makes no sense - they just want to see data customized using way they want. Its MS standard in MS Word that user require to create data source for Merge Document. Lets think another way - create layout, then program or special operator will create data source for that layout.

>Vlad-
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>>Well, originally it worked that way. However, there might be very long query for report, as well as user can design report not knowing what fields really needed for it or not having data handy. Process flow in such case: Create report layout, design report, then, later, create query and run it, then test query if it returns correct result for report. When designing report, it is not possible to know what fields are required to create temporary empty cursor for it. When using it even without records, report preview show errors for fields that does not exists in the temporary cursor. When using no cursor, preview cause Open dialog box, that also not a good thing. This is a main reason why preview should be disabled.
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>Er. I'm afraid I'm having a hard time following this. The reason the user doesn't have the data available to preview a report is because the query hasn't been created yet? Guess I'm still really unclear on how someone is picking fields and arranging them on a layout without knowing what they are.
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>One of the projects I work on...my boss has an "Example" data set that's a copy with a small set of records. It was my idea that you could something similiar, but that only works if you can include the query in the dataset.
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>IAC, I doubt there's any way to remove the preview. However, if they've laid in a field without an alias...just the field name, and there is no data open in the report's datasession, preview won't actually do anything. It just closes immediately.