>>Of all the suggestions made here, the one that has worked best for me across all versions of VFP is
>>
>>select * from cursor you want to append from into cursor c_AddThese NOFILTER
>>
>>select targetcursor
>>append from dbf("c_AddThese")
>>
>>That's because the select * command allows you to join from many tables, do filtering and change field names to match the target cursor all in one step.
>>
>>The final append from command is as simple as it can get.
>
>Mike,
>
>Thank you for your suggestion. I might try it and compare with the one INSERT-SQL command. My main goal is to make the resulting cursor filled as fast as possible. Secondly, if I switch the database to SQL Server, I would like to make the code work there (I am sure with some minor modifications) too. I don't think APPEND FROM is a valid syntax in SQL Server, although I may be mistaken.

select * from sourcecursor into cursor c_AddThese NOFILTER
INSERT into target select * from c_AddThese

It is seldom enough to aim for raw speed. I rarely see any piece of code that is that simple. There would often be some kind of validation or preparation of the c_AddThese records. Bearing that in mind, why not use the two cursors everytime for the sake of safety and flexibility?