Hello, 
I'm using VFP 7 on a very old machine. I'm working with very large tables and I need to create a lot of queries, but my tables are so large it takes forever to load the results. 
I've been creating cursors on the run from SELECT statements but it's still very slow....
What can I do to optimize my queries/views so they are much faster... I'm new to this, so I don't know much...
I just need to be able to run all this queries without freezing my pc..
Are cursors a good option should I change my indexes
Thank you so much 
Which one is faster, cursors, queries, local views, other?
Alex Chertov
yes tamar i agree wit u.
select workareas onli limited from A until J.
DannyH246
Large tables - how large are they
Check your indexes, design of tables, when using views where parameters and fetching etc. Depending on what you're doing you might not need SQL select cursors,views and seek, follwed by xbase commands might work much better.
MJC_Eagle
SELECT 0
USE myTable
SET ORDER TO TAG myIndex
SET KEY TO lcSearchKey
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE myKey = lcSearchKey
Butt3r5
For me i will use this command instead of using SQL commands
i will crearte a temp tables
tempinv = "c"+substr(time(),4,2)+substr(time(),7,2)
sele a
use invoice excl && let said this is the large files
index on invoice_no to invoice.idx
set index to invoice.idx
copy stru to &tempinv
sele b
use &tempinv shared
index on invoice_no to invoice2.idx
set index to invoice2.idx
sele a
set index to invoice.idx
go top
do while !eof()
do condition
or seek the invoice or maybe other criteria tat u wan to temporary table
its more faster than SQL commands
seek its a powerful searching functions compare to scan or locate.
sele a
skip
enddo
hope i can help u.
Jake McCutcheon
Hi
The general rule, when setting up indexes for tables is index the primary key field(s), any fields that are used directly in the WHERE clause and to add an index on DELETED() (especially if there are no deleted records in the tables).
However, if your tables are very large (sevarl millions of records) even with good indexes queries can take a long time because VFP operates on the local machine and so has to bring the data over the network to the local machine before it can do anything else. Obviously this can slow things down.
Another option is, therefore, to run the queries on a local copy of the system data (unless you actually require real-time data) - especially if this is historical analysis - where you can get away with refreshing the data occasionally (depends on how uoften the data changes of course).
Steve Wertz
For sure, your code would be faster is you replaced the macros (&) with name expressions. Also, it's not a good idea to refer to workareas by letter; use the alias instead, so you don't have to worry about specific workareas.
Tamar
Yanick
Yes, Start by reviewing your indexes, joins and where criteria.
Dave
nunuk
DotFrammie
But how abt in network environment i have 400,000 records its takes 2 mins to process my output.
Thanks in advance.