SQL Speedups

I have two questions on SQL access and tuning I can't answer for myself, from books or from the FAQ. Any help will be greatly appreciated... I'm using ESQL/C and I-SE 5.0. Q1: I need to select single data records "atomically" and stateless, and each SELECT has to return the smallest matching record. Currently this is implemented as follows: declare foo_cur cursor for select .... order by col1, col2; open foo_cur; fetcht foo_cur into $a, $b, $c; close foo_cur; In short: I just care for the first (smallest) record that the SELECT returns. Is there a faster way to implement this without adding state to the program? Q2: some of those SELECTs have huge and complicated WHERE clauses. Here's a sample: select * from table where (col1 = val1 and col2 = val2 and col3 = val3 and col4 = val4 and col5 >= val5) or (col1 = val1 and col2 = val2 and col3 = val3 and col4 >= val4) or (col1 = val1 and col2 = val2 and col3 >= val3) or (col1 = val1 and col2 >= val2) or (col1 >= val1) order by col1, col2, col3, col4, col5; The largest of those clauses does this for eight columns... There is a composite index on col1..col5, but nevertheless the optimizer decides to sort via a temporary table. Again: is there a better/faster way to do this? Thank you in advance, Gereon -- Gereon Steffens // eMail: gereon.steffens@materna.de Dr. Materna GmbH // Dortmund, Germany // ``If at first you don't succeed, redefine success''