Helen,

After having read Claudio's reply, the problems I am having trying to get a
LEFT OUTER JOIN to use an index all started to make sense.

> Claudio Wrote:
> The short answer is YOU CAN'T. When IB is given an [INNER] JOIN, it builds
> PLAN JOIN (t1 ORDER index1,t2 INDEX (index2))
> but when it sees a LEFT [OUTER] JOIN, it builds
> PLAN SORT (JOIN (t1 NATURAL,B INDEX (index2)))
> and there's no way to tell it to use index1 for t1. If you try to force

the

> supposed good plan, IB refuses it.

I apologize for any confusion my example SQL statements may have caused and
thank you for your input. You certainly gave me plenty to think about.

Chris Landowski
Dynamic Software Solutions