>
I get it. The implementation reveals horrifying risk using your technique... therefore the implementation must be at fault because the technique is perfect.
>

Having grid columns not correspond to the physical position of the underlying recordsource is not what I would call an optimal implementation. If one has the slightest clue of the inherent problems and finkyness of the grid control, one would shy away from this practice. Anything else is asking for trouble. More on this below...


>You weren't there during scoping or design.

This much is true...< vbg >... As you will see, this is not relevant...

>
You do not know the customer/s, the need, the participants, the decisionmaking, the design or the outcome. Therefore you are not competent to judge the implementation. All you know is that it does not match what you have ordained is correct, so the implementation must be at fault.
>
>We both know what the name for this is in legal terms. Don't try it in front of a judge.
>


Whether you know what this is, I don't know. In American Jurisprudence, we call it a Judgment as a matter of law. When there are no material facts in dispute, all that is left is to apply the law. In this case, the facts are clear, you dis-associate the order of grid columns with respect to underlying recordsource columns. Now, it is a matter of applying general technical principles (the law).

As you said:

>>
If you set your grid up with columns in a different order from the table order, or don't include all the table fields: if you reset the RecordSource property you risk a mismatch between the column headers and content.
<<


Since you have decided to make this a legal analogy, I'll play along. First off, judges decide matters of law. The jury and sometimes, the judge trys issues of fact. It is clear that I cannot comment on the specific facts of your implementaton and every decision. However, as the the law, or in this case, the general principals of how to implement the grid control, I am more the competent to render a comment on implementing a scheme in which the grid columns don't necessarily correspond to the columns in the underlying table. To illustrate, lets assume I have table columns A, B, C, D. While it would be acceptable to have a grid display these combinations:

A
AB
ABC
ABCD

It would not be acceptable to have combinations like this

B
C
D
BA
BAC
ACB
CD
DC
ADC
Etc...

When you get into these issues, you have to explicitly set more information/properties at the column level. If you follow a few simple rules, the underlying table can drive the grid - automatically. i.e., you can preformat the columns with different controls - all without having to specify column.controlsource. Any columns you don't want to display, you simply make sure those columns appear to the right.

With this in mind, as a matter of law/technical principal, I hereby adjudge your implementation to be sub-optimal. This is a pure technical issue. No customer would get involved in these kinds of decsions. All the customer cares about is what columns appear and what order they appear in. How you implement that solution, that is in the sole province of the developer. A good understanding of how the grid works would be central to arriving at an optimal solution. Removing uncessary complexity is a central component to arriving at an otimal solution.


PS - Stop trying to bring legal analogies into this argument. They are not working in your favor...