Hi Terry

Absolutely right!

To really show the danger of this technique, run the query and time it. Then add an access method to the .value property of the pcode_n10 class. Run the queries again. Someone could innocently add an access method to the class and the whole system could slow down. In my tests (just adding an access method to a form property) the query times inflated from .38 seconds to 2.4 seconds. That's with nothing firing in the access method.

>Denis,
>
>I'd guess it's because VFP doesn't have to look up the hierachical reference to the var, for each record it "inspects" during the SQL. Instead it has a memory var "to hand"
>
>Terry