Alex,

How about a partial answer? <s>

>- Value sorting in the dropdown lists
> (ex.: we have "Sorting Sequence" field in the database table if the sorting is not alphabetical)

Yes, we use a Sort field also.

>>Do you bind your records to codes (string value) or to IDs (autonumber)?

This depends on a few things. Some of our data uses the codes, some uses the keys. Keys are good because you can use Foreign Key constraints in your tables to keep from deleting codes records that are already being used. But, using a code instead of a key is sometimes necessary for historic data integrity. Let me explain what I mean by that. Our app is a Records Management System (for Fire Departments). Once a month every fire department needs to report their incident data to some government agency. Also, once an incident has been "closed", it can't be changed. If we were to use keys for some of this information, then if the code were changed for some reason in the code table, then the key would actually now be pointing to a different code ... which, in effect, changes the code for whatever incident referenced the row in the code table with that key. If instead, we use the code itself in our incident table instead of the key, obviously the code will never change.

~~Bonnie


>Thank you for your input Bonnie,
>
>I am also looking at specific features like...
>
>how do people usually manage (or is there any best practices on) :
>- multilinguism (ex: Status "Active" is "Actif" in french, but the CODE is "ACT" in both languages...)
>
>- parent-child relations (ex.: Country / States)
>
>- Value sorting in the dropdown lists
> (ex.: we have "Sorting Sequence" field in the database table if the sorting is not alphabetical)
>
>
>Do you bind your records to codes (string value) or to IDs (autonumber)?
>
>
>If I could find an open-source application block or something like this, it would be perfect so I could look at it.
>
>Thanks,
> Alex