>Mark,
>
>Seek is faster than locate because it doesn't have the overhead of rushmore. The larger the table gets, the faster SEEK gets compared to locate.
>
>Walter,
>

This isn't quite accurate. Rushmore is a query optimization alogorithm. It looks for an index tag it can use, and if it is there, it will use it. Once an appropriate tag is found, LOCATE will be as fast as SEEK. If an appropriate tag is not found, Rushmore may try to build one. In this case, the size of the table comes into play because it will take longer to index a large table.

However, you are correct in that SEEK will be faster than LOCATE. Because LOCATE uses Rushmore, it must search the tags to find one that it can use. This overhead is the part that slows things down.