>>>I give the option of displaying all patient names (approx 1500) in our database as a last resort to users. I tell them that this is the slowest method of searching for a patient. It takes about 3 seconds to display the entire list of names in a list control.
>>>
>>>The select is very simple:
>>>SELECT unique_id, patname from demogrph into cursor cAllPats
>>>
>>>This query takes about 3 seconds even though I have indexed on the field "patname". Doing a query that returns the complete results from a table seems redundant. How can I display (into a grid or list control) the fields from the table directly and thus decrease the 3 second query time to almost instantaneous?
>>>
>>>A BROWSE is quite efficient, can I harness this? It can display the fields I want (ordered too) almost instaneously.
>>
>>You can use table itself as grid.recordsource
>
>I have tried this with the listbox control and it didn't seem any more efficient, does the grid do this more efficiently?
>
>I have heard of tricks using SET KEY to display an index into a list.

1500 record table will appear in grid momentarily, even cursor shouldn't take 3 seconds (if you create temp files on local drive).