>While I would agree that SET RELATION is not as straight forward
>as a SEEK(), there is NO question that SET RELATION is considerably
>faster when dealing with large tables. That is why I am putting
>up with SET RELATION...

Tom,

To answer your original question, yes you do need to move the recor dpointer in the parent table to "kick" the relation in. You can do it faster then GO TOP though, you can issue a LOCATE with no arguments (LOCATE is optimzable and GO TOP is not).

It is also interesting that you find SET RELATION faster than SEEK, as SET RELATION is a SEEK under the hood.