If you are rolling your own controls in VB5 to support applications dealing with databases, consider putting a “Valid” property, “Validation” event, and a “Required” property on your controls. The Required property will assist you in determining whether or not a text box, for example, can be left blank and updates the Valid property. The Validation event should be fired by your control, allowing the developer to put their custom checks or links to the business rules layer. Then the developer can set the Valid property of your control accordingly. Developers can then check, at the appropriate time, a controls Valid property to see if they can continue, such as saving a record to the database.