I can give you a nice solution if you have SDT, which is to put the metadata (including the DBC) in a fixed subdirectory from the installation directory of the program. Then when they run your update routine, you copy down the metadata again, if any of THOSE files are missing, and run SDT's update routine. It works well. If you have a system file with next key numbers in it, you can also write a routine after SDT is finished to run through and make sure you have good key numbers. (Because what if they delete the System table?...) I have a separate meta-data table of my own to deal with this.

But, yep, $250 can be a lot of cash. I dunno, though. Can you get your client to pay for it? It will save him a lot of hours. (Unless you are your client!)

Adam