Looking for a way to provide users with a semi free form way to store data in memo fields I'm considering the WritePrivateProfileString and GetPrivateProfileString functions in Win32API. The intent of those functions is maintaining INI files and MS indicates that they only exist to provide compatibility with 16 bit apps.

Is somebody aware of equivalent functions that could write to a string and don't risk disappearing in some future Windows version?

*--- Added later

Somewhere else someone suggested XML files for a similar situation. So maybe XML strings in memo fields? Hmmm.

My goal is providing users with the capability of adding semi-free form information to a table. By that I mean user can keep track of his categories without changing the table structure. For example one may wish to keep track of his customers hobbies. Using extra fields such as User01,User02, etc and allowing user to rename them is not really appropriate because if user later changes the name, the data no longer corresponds to the name.

Of course it would be nice to be able to manipulate tables based on these virtual fields :)

Any suggestions?

TIA,

Alex