Hi Ed, is me again.

As expectd, to use ODBC to access a vfp database is impossible to have a table indexed on a UDF. If there is the need to use a UDF it must contain at least one column in the declaration. All this to say that an index on deleted() will not work through ODBC.
It would be possible to index on a UDF that returns deleted() but it would be useless for optimizations in vfp. The question is (are?)

Does it make any sense to index on something useless?
What is the penalty, in terms of optimization, in not having a tag on deleted?

TIAS