>>It's a series of SQL SELECTs with no intermediate processing.
>>
>>It roughly goes as follows:
>>
>>- SELECT a subset of records with specific characteristics (has a UNION)
>>- SELECT some records INNER JOINed on first above
>>- 4 UNIONed SELECTs to get additional records of interest also INNER JOINed on first above
>>- FULL JOIN of last 2 above, producing result set of interest. All other results ignored.
>>
>>It just seems to me that I should be able to do this using SPT, returning the single final cursor of interest.
>
>I don't know of any other way but to use #temp tables.
>
>

Select ,,,
>   into #temp1
>   from ... Union select ,,, ...
>select , , ,
>   into #temp2
>   from ...
>   inner join #temp1 on ...
>select , , , into #temp3 from ...
>   union select , , , from...
>   union select , , ,...
>select , , , from #temp2
>   full join #temp3 on ...
>-- I usually do this because they seem to vanish only when you disconnect
>drop table #temp1
>drop table #temp2
>drop table #temp3

>
>And that's it. I'm doing this quite often, when speed requires and when all I need is on the server. Sometimes there's still some more to do in VFP later, depending on where the rest of the data are (i.e. I may have pulled some other recordset already, and it's simpler to reuse it in Fox than to pull the same set again for purity's sake).

Yes, that's what I want to do.
So all I have to do is to DROP the intermediate table, leaving only the one of interest to be returned?
I assume the number sign (pound sign, etc "#") is NOT any kind of keyword?

cheers