Barbara,

the time is complete OK if there is an index on that field.

For MS SQL Server there is such a thing as an emulation of a record pointer that can be used to navigate in tables. But the Max()/Min() approach works on all backends.

You might be interessed to take a look at VBs bookmark concept for databases. In conjunction with SQL Server this offers a very fast method to navigate in tables. In addition to the MSDN / KB informations you can start the SQl Server Profiler and navigate through any VB demo table program to see what VB does on the server.


>This should work even on back ends that don't handle Top N, but it would still have the problem of needing to look at all the data above (or below) the drawing_code in question. Which brings me back to worrying about time.


Joerg Karpa