thanks for the input Bonnie. So what do you do, since you don't use views. Here is my case scenario. I have to do a cross tabulation on two tables. Then based on certain criteria, I filter the rows. Then I have to do a join with several other tables to get the information I need. Since you can't do Select statements on tables within a dataset, I am creating a view to hold the cross tabulation and then only have one Select statement to run to populate my final resulting dataset.