>hi
>what is the best/ quickest way to check if a record exists in a table? thats all I want to know, ie "select * from mytable where myid =lcid " and myId is not a primary key
>thanks
>stuart

There is no need some field to be Primary key to be used in WHERE clause :-).
So if you want to know if there are records where MyId is equal to some value your select is right. But if you want only to know if these records exsits but you don't need to have recordset based on these records you could use EXISTS() function. It stops execution after the first records is found, so that is the quickest way:

IF EXISTS (select * from mytable where myid =lcid)
    BEGIN
         print 'Record(s) exists'
    END
ELSE
    BEGIN
         print 'No record exists'
    END