>Does VFP report that it is using any of your indexes for the join? SYS(3054,11) should report this as well. If it using it for the join then that is all it can do as far as reporting optimization.

Larry,

See my other message to Vlad concerning a more recent follow-up. Basically, I have all fields indexed that are used on the join and SYS(3054,11) still tells me there is no optimization going on _anywhere_. See of my other message makes any sense...

>VFP does not report any optimization if no filter criteria is used. When you join two tables together, according to VFP, you aren't specifying a filter criteria, you are specifying a join condition (different animals). If you add a constant to your WHERE clause like where somefield = 987 (like you did in the original version) you should get different results in the optimization report.

I will try playing with that to maybe get a clue as to when Fox goes from being fully optimized to deciding it doesn't need to optimize any more at all. *smile*

Thanks for the response!

JoeK