Fast writing to a file

I'm interested in writing information from Informix-Online 5.01 to files. Naturally, I want to do it as fast as possible, if not faster. The data is generally organized as a field and an index, and I want to print out the data, but not the index, in the order of the index. I'd be interested in your comments on my thoughts about possible solutions: 1) Using a FOREACH statement: DECLARE c CURSOR FOR SELECT my_field, my_index FROM my_table ORDER BY my_index FOREACH c INTO field_tmp, index_tmp OUTPUT TO REPORT Print_value(field_tmp) END FOREACH PROS: It works, guaranteed CONS: The FOREACH operation is slower than using a statement that could perform the entire operation, such as #2 below: 2) Storing the ordered data to a temp table and using an UNLOAD statement: SELECT my_field, my_index FROM my_table ORDER BY my_index INTO TEMP X UNLOAD TO "my_file" DELIMITER " " SELECT my_field FROM X PROS: Potentially faster. CONS: I don't know that I'm guaranteed that the data will be read out of the temp table in the same order it's written in. It seems to always be true for small amounts of data, but is it *guaranteed* to be true for 100,000 or 1,000,000 records? I'm hesitant to depend on this behavior because the data absolutely positively has to appear in the order of the index. 3) Any other potential solutions I've missed? -- | . . . . . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . GIANTS Francis Small - M/S 2LRS Bums Hewlett-Packard Company Rockies Microwave Instruments Div. Padres 1212 Valley House Dr. Rohnert Park CA, 94928 707 794 3305 fthes@sad.hp.com ******************** Only 51 days left until Opening Day! *********************