Hi George

>>How may records are you using in your search. I'm guessing that the difference I see is caused by increased record pointer thrashing while it tries to resolve the bitmap against the ordered table. I've got 1 million records in my test table.
>
>As I stated in my original post, there were only 493 records records (unordered) in the table.

Aha.. This explains your results. The LOCATE without an index set might be faster because it takes less time to look trough the table sequentially than to kick in rushmore.

Therefore it may be wise to use NOOPTIMIZE when locating a record in smaller tables. Just try the same with a table with a 10.000 - 1.000.000 records or so.

Walter,