>>>>
>>>>I can speed things up from anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds down to sub 1 second if I can use this trick. But if this behaviour is likely to change in order to standardise along ANSI lines, then I need to find another way to do it, and nothing else I've tried has really worked well so far.
>>>>BTW the table does have an index tag for DELETED().
>>>
>>>Approximately how many records do you usually select?
>>
>>Depends on which query is running. Might only be 1 record, might be 10 records. Probably not more than 10 or so right now. As their use of the system grows, that number could rise dramatically.
>
>Since you use VFP9, I suggest that you take the advantage of the binary index which is extremely much faster than a normal index, especially for expressions like deleted(). That is, in stead of Index on deleted tag del, you use Index on deleted() tag del binary.
>
>I also suggest that you stick to

>Set deleted off
>Select whatever
>Set deleted on

>But I also suggest that you add the Active field I mentioned in another message, and change your code to use that field in stead of deleted() over time.

Thanks for all the ideas. I'll try changing the index to see what happens.