I know I can do it in parts, I prefer to do it in one statement (as long as the performance penalty is not so great).

>Another thing you can do if your looking for less code is union the two selects and then use a group by on your key field(s). Use this group by only if you're sure that the values of lim_num and or lim_suffix are the same in both lim_txt and lim_def.

The values of of lim_num and lim_suffix are most likely to be different between lim_txt and lim_def, that is the purpose of the two tables.

thanks