<<What Steve may be confus about is: what happens if I *SERIALLY* read
the detail dataset...in what order will I find A, B, and C?>>


I agree that there's some confusion, but have other ideas about the
location of same ;-)

<<BTW, a serial repack with Adager preserves serial relativity (ooohh...a
new phrase!) as well as chronology.>>


Fine; but Adager/DBGENERAL/whatever do not in any way constitute the
entire universe of available methods to repack a data set. A perfectly
legitimate, albeit naive, way to get the set back "in order" is to read
the set, write it out to a file, empty the set, then read it back in from
the file. Presumably the read would be done in some sorted order that
makes sense to the user, such as to group records with the same values in
a particular field together. What happens to the chronological sequence
of non-sorted paths under this transformation? If there is a
properly-constructed sort item on each chain that the user wants to
remain in chronological sequence, not a thing. If there is no such sort
item, I think it's pretty safe to say that the integrity of the
chronological sequencing of those paths will be negatively impacted.

<<The only thing I can see happening that might have led to Steve's
incorrect statement(s) is this:>>


Remind me again; which of my statements were "incorrect"?

Steve