>>SNIP
>>
>>Hi Bruce,
>>
>>Basically I use SEEK (either one) whenever I can, but something came up last month and I'd like to get to the bottom of it. Your observations with LOCATE may help in that quest. . .
>>
>>The manual says that any command (including LOACTE) will *not* be Rushmore optimized when a WHEN is included in the FOR condition(s). JimB says that WHEN has no effect on Rushmore.
>>So the question is: Did your observations of LOCATE include a WHEN condition?
>
>Hi Jim - no, I'm speaking of only the simplest case,
>
>LOCATE FOR mytable.myfield = cSomeValiue
>
>with a valid index on myfield...

I use locate for field = val on tables with 100,000 to over 1 million records all the time and I can't see any difference between seek/locate when optimized. The nice thing about locate is the index is implied, you do have to set/reset the order. Locate work best when NO ORDER is set.