>>if this is indeed the case you can reverse the use of deleted and use
>>the delete flag to mark active records (because !deleted() is not optimizable and deleted() is )
>>this way when u do SELECT .... WHERE DELETED() ...
>>it will be optimizable (if you have an index on deleted)
>
>Yes, this is true. But, we are still back to square one. This mean, we have to add a condition to not grab those deleted records all over the framework since we can't use SET DELETE ON anymore.

well, if you use local views all you need to do is to add the DELETED()
to the SELECT
this brings another option of using VFP as a server in a C/S setup
(or using a SQL server if you DB is much bigger)

Arnon