Jim,

I understand your point. However, my position is that if the position of the fields in a browse is important then the brwose should have a fields clause on it to put the feilds where they belong. Depneding on the physical structure of the table is a mistake in design. The table's physical structure could change later and your browse is hosed (if the browse has a fields clause then it is not hosed).

Creating a table interactively and putting fiel;ds in there in a logical manner is not the same as having an application that depends on the physical structure of the tables and databases. The proble here goes even deeper if the backend database changes later on. The new database may give you the same features as the previous one did. That's why Codd's rules in clude the one about the programmer not having any direct involvement with the physical storage of the data only the relational properties (database names, table names, field names).