Actually, IDX do work with SQL optimization, so none of the sentences are correct, as you can do things without having exclusive access (create an IDX with an usefull expression) and the IDX are not ignored

>As far as I understand, the correct answer is "you can do nothing to speed up these selects UNLESS you are able to create the appropriate index tags, meaning you need exclusive access to the tables". The thing is VFP uses the tags in the CDX to speed up a query, the IDXes are ignored. Unless I am wrong, I stopped using IDXes 15-20 years ago.