Greg,

I'm not sure if I can add to that. Cindy's made just about all the points I would have made, but I'll try anyway:

I'm not sure what you meant by avoiding expression length calculations, so I can't sully understand why you wouldn't always use a seek. Bear in mind that you can scope a seek, so for the equivalent of a '_TALLY>1' you could execute two seeks with the second being scoped for REST.

In terms of the fastest SELECT, cursors are generally created the same speed as arrays. The speed of the SELECT can be enhanced if your selection clause is already indexed. The SELECT will use that index and it will be nearly as fast as a seek.

HTH