>>When SELECTing from 2 or more tables with identical field names like this:

SELECT * ;
>>FROM taz2005 a;
>>inner JOIN taz2010 c ON a.taz = c.taz

>>the result field names have an "_a" appended to them for the first table and a "_b" appended for the second table. I would like them to come up with "_2005" appended for the first table and "_2010" appended for the second table. Is there an easy way to do this without writing a ton of code to parse and rename the fields?
>>
>>Secondly, I'd like the fields from the two tables to be collated so like fields would appear next to each other like this:
>>
>>HH_2005, HH_2010, etc.
>>
>>Same question, is there an easy way to do this? I know about SET FIELDS, but the issue here is each table has 40+ fields and we don't know how many, or which, tables may be joined in advance. I am trying to move my people out of excel and into a database but the complexity is daunting to them.
>>
>>Thanks for any thoughts on this.
>
>The only way (and the right way) is to explicitly list every field with the correct alias.

Thanks Naomi. That's what I was afraid of. So I guess I will have to write a loop to programmatically write the select statement. :(