thanks posters...

>By the time you go through the trouble of getting the count and reporting this >to the user, you could have had the data to your client. I would suggest some >way for you to determine in code what is a good(fast) query based on the >filters selected by the user.

This is what I mean... What I do now is..
I do the count() once when they start the application and reccommend they should use a filter.

Problem is in the old days filter were not used and it ran
on VFP tables so they have the possiblity to download huge amounts of data if


I guess what I am saying is that I agree with your comments but I was woi
wondering if anyone new a clever way to this. Becuase I can't seem to think of one without figuring out the count and comparing it to a threshold value as the other posters suggested.

I would like to
" determine in code what is a good(fast) query based on the filters selected by the user" as you said.. BUt I'm not sure how I could do it.

thanx