>Hi everyone,
>
>I need to do a SELECT DISTINCT from a table with about 100,000 records to populate the top level nodes of a treeview control, with the user able to select different fields to populate the treeview with.
>
>I have index tags on the fields that the user can specify and UPPER() of the same fields.
>
>The following query takes about 36 seconds:
>
>

SELECT DISTINCT &lcField FROM DocsMast ;
>   ORDER BY &lcField ;
>   INTO CURSOR TreeInit

>
>The following code runs in less than 1 second:
>
>

SELECT DISTINCT &lcField FROM DocsMast ;
>  INTO CURSOR TreeInit
>
>INDEX ON UPPER(&l_cField) TAG Sorted

>
>Why? Is there a way to get the result ordered without having to do a manual INDEX or wait for 30+ seconds? I gather that VFP is applying the ORDER BY to the entire table before applying the DISTINCT clause.

How about select &lcField group by &lcField instead of select distinct?