Jim,

Well - the group by I originally posted now takes (took) about 5-10 minutes (sorry I didn't actually measure). the reason I have so many records in that size is that my recsize is very small relatively speaking (85).

not sure about the deleted thing. I suspect it's always been there. My own opinion is that I KNOW it works (to speed things up) when doing selects, counts, sums, etc that look at most of the table. I do agree, however, (and now implement this) that it is pretty much irrelevant (and maybe harmful) in most "real" applications where you are narrowing down by other keys/fields already.

Ken

>Hi Ken,
>
>Do you mind telling us (me) how long this sucker takes, now that you're 'satisfied'? The reason that I ask is that I have had lots of table at the 2-gig limit but never one with more than 4.5 million or so records.
>
>Regards,
>
>Jim N
>
>PS Do you think that the DELETED() thing has been with us all along or something new (maybe with VFP at the start or maybe even in a subsequent version)?
>
>>Stephen,
>>
>>2 - things
>>
>>1) Much has come out lately about how tags on deleted() can actually hurt - and rarely help - most operations
>>
>>2) Since I have SET DELETED OFF - Rushmore would not, could not use the tag anyway - it would be irrelevant
>>
>>In any case - I've got it working fine now.
>>
>>FYI - this data is for statistical analysis - that's why it's on a local drive - it's 15 MILLION records - not 1.5, though I've recently narrowed that down to about 10 MILLION - not sure what cdx file was since it's been deleted - it was pushing 100M ... dbf was 1.7G
>>
>>thanks,
>>KEn
>>
>>>>Hi -
>>>>
>>>>turned out that simply re-indexing (or losing indexes!) solved the problem - must have been some hang-up woth that.
>>>>
>>>>Just FYI -
>>>>-data is not on network
>>>>-SET DELETED IS OFF - so indexing on deleted would be useless (said this one before)
>>>>
>>>>thanks!
>>>>Ken
>>>
>>>Rushmore uses that deleted index alot and if not there you could just hurt yourself.
>>>
>>>Local access to 1.5 mill transactions is not normal? You should seek help if you consider that "private data" {just joking}
>>>
>>>
>>>What is the size of the cdx file? 5-10 meg?
>>>
>>>__Stephen