>>>>Okay, I see your point. But I'm still biased in favor of using a view *grin*
>>>
>>>Me too. For one, SET KEY has the limitation of being restricted to a single order. Unless I create lots of composite indices.
>>
>>Huh ?
>>Now lets all grin; did we all evolute to better not have indexes at all ? If so, I should re-think what I'm doing here ;)
>>One thing I know : any next question at UT about slow responses, we should reply with the question "are you possibly using vieuws ?".
>>Hilmar, you can't be serious here.
>
>OK, let me give an example. In a parent-child scenario, in the child table I want to use SET KEY to "filter" certain records. The filter condition in the child table - were I to use a filter - would be: set filter to parent = parent.parent. With SET KEY, the command would be something like: SET KEY TO parent.parent.
>
>At the same time, the user also wants the results sorted on a certain field - or fields. Thus, I need an index on parent + orderfield1 + orderfield2, and then SET KEY TO parent. Now, I don't want to create an index on every possible combination of fields the user may want to see.
>
>>>With a view, I can quickly retrieve a subset of data, and then index (done automatically by the framework, e.g., if the user double-clicks on the grid headers).
>>
>>Never thought of this one. Now please come overhere and implement this on all of our tables usually containing over 1M records. BTW, you'll have the support too; write the helptexts on how convenient this all is, and that it is really better for you, the user.
>
>On a table with one million records, the view should retrieve the few child records you need quite quickly, if you use R.Optimization efficiently.
>
>Then, indexing the view (as a result of the user double-clicking on the grid headers) is also quite fast, because the index is like a temp table, which only has a few records.
>
>
>The framework I use is Visual Extend; it does the sorting automatically - I don't need to program anything for the sorting (including multi-column sort) to work. VFX (Visual Extend) uses existing indices if they exist, and creates missing indices as temporary (IDX) indices.
>
>I don't actually have a million-record table. But with 60,000 records in a child table, editing became quite slow, until I used a view. Which is what Visual Extend recommends anyway.
>
>Hilmar.

If you are interested in this framework, you can download the sample application from www.devigus.com.