Hi Mike

100,000 records is not large. A file like this assuming the records are not enormous can be packed very quickly. I regularly pack files of 300,000 records of 200-300 bytes in under a minute. Mind you this is not done after each delete but as a maintenance routine at the end of the day.

I use set deleted on to hide the deleted records until they are packed.

Simon



>Traditionally I have handled by data files as .dbf. i.e. when adding records I would use append, when deleting I would delete and pack.
>
>I am now in a project where the data file could be very large in the order of 100,000 records. I am aware that delete/pack starts to become very time consuming with large data files.
>
>I have never used Select SQL for my data management. Would the various features of Select SQL permit deleting records more quickly than delete/pack ?
>
>Mike Smith