>Can it be done without creating a view?

David,

You can create an index on a tbale that refers to a filed in a related table, however, you will never be able to use the table with the index without first opening the other table and setting the relationship. Also changing the data in the realted table will NOT update the index on the other table as that table has had no change in data. Therefore the index will only be deopendable immediately after it is created meaning you would need to create the index everythime you wanted to use it. These issues certainly make the view or SQL SELECT seem like a better solution to the problem.