Unions vs Selects

Hello, Does anybody out there use INFORMIX-4GL UNIONs??? I've heard that I should stay away from them, because they are unreliable and inefficient. What have been your experiences with UNIONs... Do they work consistently? How much slower are they then one SELECT? I need to build a very large query dynamically and it sure would be a lot easier to UNION a bunch of SELECTs than to build one big SELECT. If I decide not to UNION all the SELECTs together, then might I not run into another problems... Is there a limit on the size of a SELECT statement? Is there a limit on the size of string that can be prepared and then declared as a cursor for a SELECT statement? The largest part of my SELECT statement would consist of the WHERE clause. If there is a limit on the size of one SELECT statement, does anyone know of a work around?? Any ideas, comments, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank You, Tom Leccese Performance Software Inc. voice: (201)-808-7062 email: uunet!4gen!psi!tom