Took me forever to figure out a pattern. A one-to-many relationship from 1 PARENT table to a CHILD table. PARENT has a PRIMARY KEY value. Have RI set to cascade,restrict,restrict. If I open the project and then the database and then browse the PARENT table and make a change to a record, immediately, the RECORD VALIDATION fires off on the CHILD table ( I have some custom code ) when the RI rules should have just cascaded the change. NOW, if I open VFP and the project from scratch and move the CHILD table pointer off the first record, the problem goes away completely!! I can update the PARENT all day and the changes are immediately cascaded in the CHILD table. I originally thought the problem existed in a utility screen w/ a PRIVATE DATASESSION, but eventually traced it back to the actual DATABASE. Could I have corruption in the structure or have I missed some basic concept. Thanks as always.