Gerald,

It doesn't make any difference if you pad with X's or you let str() use spaces. Your index expression would be a bit slower because of the extra function calls involved.

>STR() return a lot of spaces, try to index with something like:
>

>PADL(ALLTRIM(STR(ParentID)),10,"X")+PADL(ALLTRIM(STR(ChildOrder)),10,"X")
>