Marco,

> > If you can orderting ascending (positive) you should be able to order
> > descending, too....
> >
>
> It's not always true. Often I manually build the descending, i.e. I want
> NAME=AGE, LAST_NAME; AGE DESC, LAST_NAME ASC
> so I have to test DESC part too, since I could have written
> NAME=AGE, LAST_NAME; AGE DESC, LAST_NAMEXXX ASC

I see.

Then you still can use the TRY..EXCEPT-construct and set ORDERINGITEMNO
to the loop variable. And if the OrderingItems[ii]-string contains a ';'
you can additionally set the OrderingItemNo to the negative loop
variable.
(Anyway you can test the negative value anyway since IBO won't complain
if there's no DESC ordring, it will just order as if the positive value
was chosen)

Or am I missing sth.?

Luc.