>>Beth,
>>
>>Does adding a WHERE clause and eliminating the IIF statements help? Like WHERE not empty(date_calc) and not empty(date_appr)... or if you need to evaluate both date_calc and date_appr, perhaps splitting it using the UNION clause.
>>Also, do you have indexes on date_calc and/or date_appr?
>>
>>Regards,
>>Ed
>
>You can not add NOT EMPTY as a condition, because AFAIK EMPTY is not optimizable. You need to write
>
>not myDateField =={} if you have an index on date.

EMPTY is optimizable if there is an index with INDEX ON EMPTY(FIELD). EMPTY is noted as not optimizable in the help as a note near BETWEEN and INLIST because EMPTY does not optimize the way BETWEEN and INLIST do. That is, those functions will use an INDEX ON FIELD.