Right, I trying to end up with a table that has a column that shows ALL the catagories, and a column that shows which catagory is matched to a specific ab_id (in the example - 57).

Catlink has:
ab_id  catagory
56     animal
56     mineral
57     animal
58     animal
58     mineral
58     vegetable

catagory has:
animal
vegetable
mineral

If 'where ab_id = 57' the resulting table would look like
ab_id  catagory
.null. animal
57     mineral
.null. vegetable

OR 'where ab_id = 56' 
56     animal
56     mineral
.null. vegetable

Does that make any sense? From reading the docs it sounds like a right join would do that but I've not been able determine the correct sequence for the join.

BTW- I just finished reading 'Effictive Techniques". Excellent book, it should have been the first book I read. Thanks.