Stephen
Perhaps you should harness some of the display mechanisms used by the net- most of us will have looked something up on Yahoo and seen the "2,556,665 matches found" sort of message. But you only see 20 at a time and people are happy with that.
I recommend you should start with a select count(*) to see how many records match. If there are <200, pull them and display them. If there are >200, do what Yahoo does and display the first 200 but allow the user to increment back and forward through sets of 200 or whatever number you choose to display. You can easily construct useful queries using SELECT TOP 200 and the first and last values in your current subset to pull the previous/next set.
If you do this, it does not really matter how big your database gets in Oracle, SQL Server or VFP; as long as the key is indexed, it will be quick.
HTH
Regards
JR
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
