Has anyone considered a fourth generation language called DataNow from Idaho Computer Services, Inc.? We have been using it for several years and couldn't do without it. Development time is minimal (one programmer wrote 7 extract, sort, and print programs in one day). There is no compiling, linking, etc. Up to six databases and 16 datasets may be accessed at a time. KSAM and MPE files are also accessable. MPE security controls all data access (you need read access to the data). The resulting program can be texted into a text editor (Editor, Q-Edit, etc.) to alter or create a seperate program. Output can be to a dataset, a KSAM or MPE file, or to a common delimited file for down- loading to a spreadsheet, or of course, to a printer or a terminal screen. With 29 batch jobs and 121 sessions running, our HP300/997-300 extracted 1,304,668 206 character records into a KSAM file in approximately 4 minutes. Just putting another apple in the pot. Thanks for your time.