>Please Note: VFP 8
>
>I have a cursor (crsAllCust) with a list of customer names. There are 30 records in this table.
>I have another cursor (crsFillRate) with some customer data in it.
>
>I need to join these tables to provide a count of how many records there are per customer which meet a certain criterion. I need a record returned even if there are none with a matching condition. There are three customers which have no data in crsFillRate. There are an additional two customers who have records, but without any data matching the condition.
>
>

>SELECT  cust.customer, COUNT(*) ;
>   FROM crsAllCust cust;
>      LEFT JOIN crsFillRate fr ON cust.customer = fr.custshipm;
>   WHERE EMPTY(fr.PartOrders);
>   GROUP BY cust.customer

>
>The five "nodata" records fall out of the result. By changing the query to

>SELECT  cust.customer, COUNT(*) ;
>   FROM crsAllCust cust;
>      LEFT JOIN crsFillRate fr ON cust.customer = fr.custshipm AND EMPTY(fr.PartOrders);
>   GROUP BY cust.customer

>
>I get all the customers.
>
>I think I've had this explained to me before, but apparantly it hasn't stuck (sorry Tamar). Could somebody please give me a refresher course of what the query steps are that cause the five records to fall out of the first query?
>
>Thanks..........Rich

Please see this blog Why LEFT JOIN doesn't bring all records from the LEFT table? explaining the problem.