Hello Zlatko

Using a Running Total as you describe is the standard solution to this problem, but as you suspect there is always the fear that the totals may get out of step with the actual amounts.

You could put maintenance code in the system that re-calculates all the running Totals every night which would minimise the risk.

VFP is so fast that with the proper indexes you may find that you can avoid having to use running totals altogether.



>Let's say there's a table FRUITS like this:
>
>Product Qty
>-----------------
>BANANA 3
>APPLE 1
>CHERRY 2
>BANANA 5
>BANANA 6
>APPLE 1
>BANANA 8
>BANANA -2
>...
>-----------------
>
>So, we need a sum for each product and it's done with:
>
>SELECT product, sum(qty) FROM FRUITS GROUP BY 1 INTO CURSOR STOCK
>
>
>It works fine, but suppose the table has a lot of records with lots of products (and not only one filed to sum) and the SELECT statement takes some time, which is not acceptable in a situation. It can be done with creating a new table STOCKS, which is updated every time the primary FRUITS changes some values. It's rather unfriendly and complicated to program that kind of solution.
>
>Is there some simple way to do it?
>
>
>Thank's, Zlatko.