>
> I use relations where the parent key and the child key are quite different.
> ....
> ...AB123420020501" and with NEAR ON you could SEEK the PatientID and come
> to the most recent visit.

Cindy -

cool !! thanks for the reply. it's serendipity that you mention
the composite fields, because i do that a lot in one project. i
would not have guessed you could use a transformation (like str or
val) to set relations between fields of unlike datatypes.

see reply to Tamar. guess i don't feel so bad about asking this now.
again, i learned something other than the basic answer -- something
that i would not have thought to ask.

Thanks,