force use of an index - how to?

Let us say I have a table called person with lastname,firstname,middlename. I want a list of everyone but sorted by lastname,firstname,middlename.

thus:
select * from person order by lastname,firstname,middlename;

Assume I have created an index on lastname,firstname,middlename.

I am using Oracle 7.1.3.3 and It keeps doing a full table scan and then sorting the results. Not good. I have added where rownum<1000 and that certainly is much faster, but I want the possibility of fetching the whole result set. I have tried hints by specifying the index to use and I have tried setting things up so I get best response time on first rows. Nothing made it any better. Any suggestions besides don't do that.

Jim Kennedy Received on Wed Apr 12 1995 - 00:00:00 CEST