it probably has to do with the fact that when you ZAPed the tables the INDEXes were zapped as well and thus when you appended theywe created from scratch (which doesn't happen when you PACK) Arnon > >Hi all, > >Today I deleted 25,000 records from a 30,000 record table, and packed it. >A SQL (40 records) which had been taking <1 sec. now took 15 sec. >:-((( >So, I: > >a. reindexed. Still slow > >b. re-packed Still slow > >c. checked every clause in the SQL and matched them with indexes. Still >slow > >d. Restored the original. Speed was fine. :-)) > >e. Deleted, speed was fine. :-) > >f. Packed - slow again :-(( > >g. Copied data (5K records) to a temp file, ZAPped and appended. > >Speed is now terrific - almost too fast to see. :-) > >Question: Why did this happen? > >TIA >Barbara > >