Jack,

Yes, if a table is already open then SQL will use it again and close the second instance when finished.

You can see this by doing the following.

Open the Data session Window and run a query in the command window.

SELECT * FROM Junk INTO CURSOR MyResult

Now click on each of the work areas open in the data session window and you will see that they are work areas 1 and 2.

Now close the cursor and run the same query again with the source tabel open. Then check what work area the cursor is in, it will be 3 (because 2 was used for the temporary opening of the source table).

I believe the reason it works this way is to prevent SQL from moving the record pointer in other work areas.