David F,

Thanks for your suggestion. I have since figured it out:

1) The 'please wait' was not generated by VFP. I am using Accountmate software. They have an on error error handler, whose code I can't see. When I turn it off I don't get the please wait. Once I realized this I could debug it more easily. When the error handler is turned off the form just fails to load and returns the 'error loading form or de' message. In the case where the view definition is wrong I will get the base tables have changed error.

In this case, however, it turns out that the problem was with parameterized views in the DE. Accountmate uses a global variable called gckey1 for all its parameterized views. For some reason, after finishing a sales order in accountmate, they set gckey1 to .f., instead of an empty string. Upon opening the view sql server was attempting to compare the key value (type char) with a bit value, which is what caused the error.



>David,
>
>Open the form in the designer, open the DE design surface. You can rightclick each view and choose browse. The attempt to browse the view should throw the same error.
>
>You could also simply try to USE each view from the command window. You can open the form as a table and run a scan loop to programatically test each view.
>
>>I am now gettig a similar error, but I can't find the offending view, or determine if it is the same problem. In debugging it, I found the following:
>
>>Can anyone explain this behavior, and help me to trace through which view and/or other DE related issue is causing this problem?