>>insert into is preferrable almost all the time
>
>I've heard this a couple of times but I've never seen why INSERT INTO is
>preferrable to APPEND BLANK. If it's not too much trouble, could you
>explain why this is the case. Does it matter as much in a single-user
>system as it does in a multi-user system? Thanks in advance.
>
>Gary
Gary,

INSERT INTO is preferrabel for two reasons, one acedemic and the other practical. The acedemic reason is that INSERT INTO is SQL and therefore is more easily scaled up to larger systems in the future.

The practical reason is that in a netowrk INSERT INTO is considerably faster than APPEND BLANK and REPLACE for this reason. APPEND BLANK causes a packet to the entwork to add the enw record and to update all indexes reflecting the new record with blank values in teh fields, then the replace sends another packet to update the fields and to again update the indexes to reflect the new field values. INSET INTO send one packet with the new values and updates the indexes once with the field values. IN a busy network this can be a serious performance improvement.