>>If you add a NOFILTER to the query's you'll come to the conclusion that the query's with an index on DELETED() will be slightly SLOWER than the query's without an index.
>
>I was scratching my head at why David's test was so different from mine, too. You have answered it, I think...I used NOFILTER in mine, which I almose always use in practice. As I noted, the results were extremely close (so close as to not matter, anyway) with & without deleted tag, SET DELE ON, no deleted records in my table of 500,000 recs, 20 MB.

Hi All!

I guess we try to get to know a black box. I question is, How smart fox is to optimize? If Deleted is the first that fox is check (and result set in percent is high), the Deleted tag is usefull, but if deleted status check is the last step, (and result set is low in percent) deleted tag has very low impact on performance.
If someone of creators of fox would answer to this thread, we could be sure about it. Is not it?

BB