>Jim, I greatly appreciate this reply. It confirms that business objects use unbound controls (we had many UT discussions about bound and unbound approaches).

Ed,

Well one design approach does it this way (mine) :-).

I actually have two framework models that I use, one if pure VFP and uses DE's controlsources and so forth. The other is N-Tier where I build teh UI, the middle tier objects, and the data store as separate entitites which can be mixed and matched at will.

The chice of which model to use is purely based on the requirements of the project. I find that the pure VFP with data binding is simpler and easier to maintain and write, but the N-Tier model is much more flexible and scalable allowing a wide variety of front ends and backends to be integrated easily.

If the project needs the flexibility and scalability then I use the N-Tier model. If it is a simple pure VFP solution then I use the pure FP model.