>>My user will never delete more than 5% of records: they enter
>>invoices, customers, goods and packing runs periodically, largest
>>tables are 250000 records, 30 MB
>>
>>Do you agree that in this case index on deleted() will decrease the speed of queries?
>
>No, I wouldn't say that...it just might not increase the speed much...
>It's supposed to be more dependent on size than # of deleted's. I don't believe that's a large enough table for the deleted index to make a lot of difference in SQL, but were I you, I might test a little to compare the results, if you haven't done it yet...besides we're all curious about it, now :)
Fearless forecast: you fill find that some (not all) queries will be faster without Deleted() tags and, 'incidentally', SEEK/SKIP will be even faster, but for these particular queries only. However, while we may toggle our query methodology, we cannot toggle with tags in real application.
Edward Pikman
Independent Consultant