Steve,

I think you are on the right track.

I was surprised that my inquiry did not get any right-on responses at first. Perhaps we FoxPro programmers have been thinking "in the box" of traditional database application searches FOR ALL THESE YEARS! Something new has come along -- Google searches are better!

I have a suggestion: In your key word table, only put one key word in cText field. This will allow the field to be shorter, making the table and index files much smaller. (As a result, including the memo fields is not such a big burden.) If I understand your approach, this should work. You can also do several separate SQL queries and join the results. There is a good FAQ in the UT archives on this, See FAQ#8109. The title is something like Rushmore - not always optimal.

Also, consider a rank/priority field for the key word file. Words from important character fields get a higher rank than words from less important character fields, and these get a higher rank than words from memo fields. This will allow you to prioritize the results and put the best on top, like Google does.

I hope this effort will make applications better. It should.

Rick