RE: trigger program: can I fool a program into reading some selec t fields from another file?

Joel,

it appears that you will not be able to adhear to your #1 rule of database 
design.  the design is already done.

my advice would be to update all descriptive data in all of your satellite 
item files to match the corporate master, and implement an 'after/update' 
trigger on the corporate master. 

In your trigger, if any of the before and after buffers for the 
descriptive fields are different, update your satellite files for that 
item with the new item.

for one thing, you aren't running a trigger on EVERY SINGLE READ ;) of the 
various satellite files, you're just running one when the corporate record 
is changed, and then only if they change the descriptions.   that's going 
to save you a lot of cycles.

I would then lock down maintenance of these fields at the satellite level, 
because any work done there would be superflous, unproductive and probably 
downright frustrating for anyone trying to change the fields :)

hth,

Rick Baird
317-655-7318