>>>>>I'm often confused by whether I need to include all the fields I mention in my WHERE clauses when selecting fields for the result set, and it's just now coming to a head - perhaps someone here could clarify for me.
>>>>>
>>>>>Let's say for example I want a list of all the items ever purchased by a client, and those items are linked to the client number through a long tree:
>>>>>
>>>>>Clients ---- Invoices ---- InvDetail ---- Items
>>>>>
>>>>>Can I get this list by saying:
>>>>>
>>>>>SELECT Items.ItemName FROM Items, InvDetail, Invoices ;
>>>>> WHERE Invoices.ClientNo = "12345" ;
>>>>> AND InvDetail.InvoiceNo = Invoices.InvoiceNo ;
>>>>> AND Items.ItemNo=InvDetail.ItemNo ;
>>>>> ORDER BY 1 ;
>>>>> INTO CURSOR JustItems
>>>>>
>>>>>... or do I need to include clientno, both invoiceno's and both itemno's in the field list?????
>>>>>
>>>>>TIA
>>>>
>>>>You can do something similar without having to include the fields by using joins instead.
>>>>
>>>>Dan
>>>Dan;
>>>
>>>Thanks for replying in 3 minutes! What great service I get here on UT!
>>>
>>>Just to make sure I understand:
>>>
>>>If I stick with the WHERE's to define the relationships, I need to include the fields in the field list, but if I do JOINs instead of WHEREs I won't have to???
>>
>>What fields you include (before the FROM) have nothing to do with your JOIN or WHERE conditions.
>
>I see - so VFP treats a WHERE exactly like an INNER JOIN, and I don't need to
include the fields either way, eh?

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. As a matter of fact, until VFP 5, that was the only way we had to do "joins" was through the WHERE clause. An outer join could be simulated with the use of UNION.