Mark,
Cetin's points were excellent. Remember also that if you SELECT from a single table you can use the NOFILTER clause to make sure you have a separate cursor, not a filter of the original table.

Barbara

>>

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Mark,
>>Other than some cleanup benefits cursors are "always" written to disk. IMHO take the easy way and select into table.
>>OTOH if you have a DBC open (or create a temp one) you could create-drop a temp view on the fly.
>>Cetin
>
>Cetin,
>I'm actually not looking for the 'easy way'; I want to know what happens and why it doesn't work.