>>Interesting -- So I was correct after all recently about LOCATE being slower than SEEK, and I've noticed it since, also. I retract my retraction. < s > It seems to have some extra overhead that SEEK does not have. I've also seen vfp apparently confused on an optimized LOCATE on a large table (only the first LOCATE on a particular index), where it takes a few seconds to do anything at all occasionally, whereas I've never seen this with any SEEK...
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>This makes sense. When doing a LOCATE, VFP must search through all the tags to determine if one can be used for Rushmore optimization. If one isn't found, it is possible that VFP will build an index on the fly...again adding overhead (and significant in this case).

I think Mike hit on the LOCATE delay -- it's not long enough to build an index on a large table (and where the index definitely exists), just a one or two second pause...