Hi Randy,

I've been beaten with the same problem (using left join and putting condition into where clause turning this into INNER JOIN) at least three times before I finally learned it :)

Now, I hope, I would never make the same mistake.

>Hello Tamar,
>
>This past weekend I was banging my head (figuratively) against a particularly gnarly SQL SELECT statement that denormalizes poorly normalized FP/DOS data for a VFP9 report cursor. Thanks to Chapter 4, I was able to take a bit of knowledge gained from your presentation at a Chicago FUDG meeting last year, and lock in the proper use of a sequential LEFT JOIN with three tables. The real gem (page 47) was figuring out that one of the WHERE conditions was filtering out records from the two JOINed tables that I really wanted - moving the condition to the ON clause fixed the problem; and there was great rejoicing at the keyboard!
>
>Morals of the story: Attend User Group meetings.- Buy the books - Attend a conference. It all really makes a difference in development.
>
>Thanks very much for your contributions to the community,