Subject Re: indexing problem From Mervyn Bick <invalid@invalid.invalid> Date Sun, 10 Jul 2016 15:39:04 +0200 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started On 10-Jul-16 2:54 PM, Charlie wrote: > OK great thanks! > > I almost had it before coming for help.  Although I was confused because I used a , instead of a +....... When creating a compound (multi-field) index in XDML all the elements need to be the same type.  This effectively means all the individual fields used in the index expression need to be converted to characters. To concatenate character strings one uses the + symbol. When using SQL one can create an ordered rowset by including an ORDER BY clause in the SELECT statement.  In this case the fields on which the rowset is ordered by are separated by commas. SELECT * from whatever ORDER BY field1,field2 In this case the fields do not need to be of the same type. When accessing a table using XDML the only option for ordering data (other than by physically sorting the table) is to use an index. In OODML the query object can use either a dBASE index or an ORDER BY clause.  With one specific exception using an ORDER BY clause renders the rowset read-only.  Generally speaking, because there are times when it doesn't matter if a rowset is read-only, this makes an ORDER BY clause more suited for reports than for forms. Mervyn.