>>>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

If you can, put the whole operation into a single SELECT, without #tables.