Marc- Your Quote, "This command takes too long when we run it from a workstation but I can not think of any way to speed it up." So I assume it's on a network?
Is there also any way you can bring this table to a local level and bypass some network traffic? Perhaps lock the table (lan)> bring it in a temp copy (local now)> do what you need to (local)> update the locked table (lan)> unlock it (lan). Just a thought. Sincerely, Paul D www.SystemNets.com

