Hi Colin

No wriggling out of this now, I know set key beats the filters, but the point is you said your second example beats your first. I too was selecting a small number of records, actually one! I can make the example code select any set of 50 records, but changing the filter criteria. Setting it to scan through a set of 50 records, shows the first example takes .08 seconds and the second takes 5.137 seconds. I think you should go back and retest.

BTW, I added set key and a select and they tied when selecting 50 records. Set key won when only one records was selected.

>Mike
>
>I am picking a small number of records from a large database - hence the difference in our findings. However I think that Sergey's answer SET KEY TO beats the lot.
>
>Thanks
>
>Colin