Jim,

>When SET DELETED is ON EVERY record must be checked for delte status regardless as to whether it is deleted or not.

This is the cases when you've no other indexes on the table. If you've a index on the table which is used in an optimizible expression, only the records within the selection made based on this optimizible index are checked. Only the resultset of the expression is tested on their delete status.

If you've used a well selecting index, like on articleno. in a invoice table, only the record for the selected resultset (which in this cases could be only 0.1% of the entire table) is tested on the deletion status.

>The number of deleted records is not important, it is only the set deleted that is important. Set deleted on with no deleted records still requires that VFP check every record for deletion only to find out that they aren't deleted.

Again, this only applies to those cases where rushmore could not find another index to take advantage off. If there is another good selector then you don't need this DELETED() tag.

>In my testing with a table of 20,000 records and 2 deleted records I get a 10% improvement with a tag on deleted() the same is true if there are no deleted records.

How much is this in absolute time ? I'll bet about thents of seconds ?

In my testing table of 1.900.000 records i've deleted about 19.000 records and could not find any significant difference with or without the deleted() tag.

Regards, Walter