>
>Nigel,
>So what is returned if oChild doesn't exist?
>
>If the application doesn't need the calculation object, why is it calling it? It sounds as though you need validation code everywhere anyway. Yes you can black box calls to oChild within oParent (oApp) and this will solve the existence issue but where are putting the code to make sure the data being returned is good data. It doesn't appear, at least from the little information I have, that you can centralize this.

Larry,

Oh contraire - I think I spelt it right :)

Checks can be centralized. The Procedure/Method will check that the oChild object has been created - if not, it will return an (empty) valid result. Only validation required is to check that the correct type of data is returned.

Apologies for being somewhat vague but I can't talk openly about what I'm working on (client is very strict on that).

This was intended to be a generic question. Now it's becoming a bit specific.