>>The whole notion of helping a friend IMO is the basis of what makes the FoxPro community tick.
>
>I completely agree. I have noticed that this ideal (is that right?) is not as strong in the other IT communities. Too bad..
>
>-Mike

Mike,

Here's what Mark sent me back. Can you help me decipher it please?

Doug,

Thanks for the relay. Here are the results testing the suggestion:

> SET STATISTICS IO ON
> SELECT * FROM appl WHERE name_licensee LIKE 'tab%'
> SELECT * FROM appl WITH INDEX() WHERE name_licensee LIKE 'tab%'
> SET STATISTICS IO OFF
>
> Where is the name of the index on the name_licensee column.
>
> The WITH INDEX() is an optimizer hint. With it, I forcing the optimizer to
> use the specified index. We're interested in the Logical Page count. If
the
> first query has a smaller value, SQL Server is solving the query in the
best
> possible way. If the second query has a smaller value...

Results from 1st query:
Table 'appl'. Scan count 1, logical reads 13158, physical reads 0,
read-ahead reads 11697.

Results from 2nd query: (much faster performance, BTW)
Table 'appl'. Scan count 1, logical reads 522, physical reads 16, read-ahead
reads 2.

Thanks again!!

DD