Hi Jim,

>I am specifically asking Christof if I have correctly interpreted his description and if that interpretation means that the type of bloat that we were used to seeing in prior versions of VFP is no longer prevalent in VFP7SP1.

It's already late here and I'm not sure I really understand what you are asking. "CDX bloat" as "formerly used but now unused space" hasn't changed in SP1. REINDEX still creates the index from the scratch using the definition stored in the index, INDEX ON still adds to the index file and DELETE TAG leaves the space in the file. What has changed is the way index nodes are created. I think in most database systems this is called a "fill factor".

Suppose the following situation in a VFP application: Whenever an application added a new record it searched for deleted records and recalled them. In the latest version, this VFP application doesn't recycle records anymore for performance reasons, but always uses INSERT INTO to create new records. The space required by the table increases, because the allocation algorithm has changed, just like in VFP. And just like SP1 doesn't change anything regarding index bloat, the maintainance functions in this imaginary VFP application would still remove all deleted records. And probably some user will notice the difference and report it as a bug.

>>Observing the difference, and finding not one whit of mention in the product documentation regarding differences in either .CDX structure<<

The CDX structure has not changed, just the allocation algorithm. The .CDX file structure is fully documented in the help files.

Christof