>SNIP>
>>Well, the lousy news is that it is far slower. It's interesting that if I just type the select into the command window after setting deleted on, it takes about 20 seconds to run. In the exe it takes about half that time. I checked the optimisatin with sys(3054,1) and it says the query is fully optimized. As long as deleted is on, it appears that no matter what I do, it's damned slow.
>
>How many records in the table? Soyunds like a lot if you have a 20 seconds first run.
>
>Try removing the TAG on deleted() and see what happens - even if it says only partially optimized.
>
>cheers

One of the tables this is happning on has just under 100,000 records, which by VFP standards, is a reasonable size. Two of the others are about 170,000 and 140,000 respectively.

I'm running over a network, but since doing it the other way brings it down to sub 1 second, I figure that can't be much of a factor.

I'll try dropping the deleted() tag and see what happens. After all, what have I got to lose?

Thanks Jim