>>>>>is something like this possible? I get an error, but I thought it should have worked:
>>>>>

>>>>>UPDATE EmpItems 
>>>>>    LEFT JOIN HistItems ON HistItems.eiKey = EmpItems.eiKey
>>>>>    WHERE HistItems.DelFlag = 0 
>>>>>    SET EmpItems.itOnPosted = 1, EmpItems.itBalAmt = HistItems.itBalNew + HistItems.itPostCalc
>>>>>

>>>>>Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
>>>>
>>>>The SET clause must be right after UPDATE.
>>>>

>>>>UPDATE EmpItems 
>>>>SET itOnPosted = 1, 
>>>>itBalAmt = HistItems.itBalNew + HistItems.itPostCalc
>>>>
>>>>FROM EmpItems
>>>>INNER JOIN HistItems ON HistItems.eiKey = EmpItems.eiKey -- no need to use LEFT JOIN
>>>>    WHERE HistItems.DelFlag = 0 
>>>>

>>>
>>>I was so used to flip that around in VFP!
>>
>>Hmm, never tried flipping it around in VFP either. BTW, pay attention to other changes I made in your query.
>
>Great, it's working good, and fast. Problem was that originally I had a scan doing the updates in Business objects and posting one by one, and that took too long, so I had to do a direct query to update all at once.

I am not sure why do you need inner join here. Why not just:

UPDATE EmpItems ;
SET itOnPosted = 1, ;
itBalAmt = HistItems.itBalNew + HistItems.itPostCalc;
FROM HistItems where HistItems.eiKey = EmpItems.eiKey and HistItems.DelFlag = 0