>Edward -
>
>Maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. The XX.DBF file is just a test file. When we run this query against our regular table (about 4,000 records), it takes much, much longer.
>
>And no, I don't want to run the query 4,000 times, even at 0.04 seconds each!
>
>- George [Indexing on DELETED() helped a little. But the query still took about a minute to run, however (56 seconds, I think.)]

It's strange that you get so different results, especially for 4K table. BTW, what is the best time for real case? Do you restart VFP after each query making bench tests?