>Someone asked why someone would SELECT into a cursor which does not have the correct strucure, one of the reasons is speed.

I asked that question. :)

By correct structure, I did not necessarily mean correct *final* structure. Yes, doing intermediate SELECT statements can speed things up. I meant that it could be faster to add the field as part of the SELECT, rather than running the SELECT without the field, and then turning right around and ALTER TABLE.

Both you and Cetin have said you have needed to "alter table" the results of a SELECT. I was just curious as to what the scenario would be.

Thanks for that code snippet. I didn't know you could do that with the READWRITE clause, and that's cool.