>In a one to many relationship between a parent and child table, what is the lightest way to count() the child table and return the parent description in one SQL statement?
>
>Like:
>TableParent = SomeID I, description C(50)
>TableChild = pk I, SomeID I, OtherTablePK I)
>
>My answer is this:
>
>

>Select count(tablechild.someid) as itemcount, tableparent.description ;
>  from tablechild ;
>    left outer join tableparent ;
>    on tablechild.SomeID=tableparent.SomeID ;
>   group by tablechild.someid,tableparent.description
>

>
>But it seems that I'm missing a "lighter" way to do this... am I?

It depends on what you mean with a ligther way. SQL server is a different beast as VFP in many respects. If you have an index on tablechild.someid that SQL server is smart enough to use the index only and never touches the tablechild table physically. Though we can discuss about the order and nature of the join, I don't think it is that relevant in terms of performance. Just make sure you've got indexes on the joined fields and examine the execution plan to see how it is executing the query.