Hi Steve,

Sorry for the long delay.

SELECT SQL is very powerfull and worth the time to learn. Also INSERT SQL and UPDATE SQL are very usefull.

lets see if I understand your question. The usage of .. AS Cur1 is most like USE ... ALIAS . IOW Cur1 and Cur2 are aliases used within the SQL Select statement. If you use it without the AS clause in FROM and JOIN, you have to replace each Cur1 with Rate and each Cur2 with cdr. I personally like the Curn style because it's more easy for copying between differnt SELECTS (and it helps for macroexpansion in tablenames, but this an other story).
I tend to 'overnormalize', sorry for it. I do without thinking about it.

The first selects should gather all not empty records from cdr and connect them with all records from rate wich fits in any way. A record dnis="0115411555555" should be result in two records, one for Rate.Code="0115411" and one for rate.code="01154".
The work is done in the ON clause wich compares dnis=code and also eliminates the empty recods of cdr table.
IOW FROM .. INNER JOIN ... connects to tables by the rule given by ON. Any record that fit not to that comparsion will not be listed in the result set. If one record from the one "side" of JOIN finds more than one record on the other "side" of the join the result set will hold the number of 'Hits'. This is why we get records for each Rate.Code="0115411" and rate.code="01154".

The second select reads the maximum codes for a given UniqueID.

The third select gives the only those records from the first select that we have found to be those with the longest code for each UniqueID. Again the work is done in the ON clause which says "Give me those records from curHelp which could be found in curSum, eleminate the rest". The result is the information we need. Now we have to pass those information to the cdr table.

I will change the example so that it hold your unifier. I also remove the Cur* from the SELECT's. Simple single step trough the code and see whats happens. Browse the result of each SELECT so you can see what happens.

SELECT cdr && cdr is call records in previous
SET ORDER TO _Primary	     &&your Primary key replace _primary with your name
*or
INDEX ON CDR.DNIS+CDR.StartDT  TAG _Primary

SET EXACT OFF

SET STEP ON

SELECT;
 cdr.DNIS+cdr.StartDT                          AS CDR_Uni,;			&& unifier of cdr 
 Rate.DEST                                     AS CDR_Dest,;
 Rate.CODE                                     AS CDR_Code,;
 Rate.Rate                                     AS CDR_Rate,;
 cdr.Duration                                  AS CDR_Duration,;
 IIF(cdr.Duration >0,;
  IIF(cdr.Duration<Rate.MinimumSec,;
   (Rate.MinimumSec/60),
   (CEILING(cdr.Duration/Rate.INCREMENT)/60*Rate.INCREMENT)),;
  0)                                           AS CDR_billdur,;
 IIF(cdr.Duration > 0,Rate.Rate*cdr.billdur,0) AS CDR_Charge;			&&MayBe You need do that down in the replace because of first normalising BillDur
 FROM Rate,;
 INNER JOIN cdr;
  ON ALLTRIM(cdr.dnis)=Rate.CODE;
  AND !EMPTY(cdr.DEST);
  INTO CURSOR curHelp
*this gives Code "0115411"  as well as "01154" for  dnis="0115411555555"

*now lets see how to get rid of the double records 

SELECT;
 curHelp.CDR_Uni,;
 curHelp.CDR_Code,;
 MAX(LEN(ALLTRIM(curHelp.CDR_Code);
 FROM curHelp;
 INTO CURSOR curSum;
 GROUP BY 1,2
*only the longest codes for a CDR_Uni should survive

SELECT;
 curHelp.CDR_Uni,;
 curHelp.CDR_Dest,;
 curHelp.CDR_Code,;
 curHelp.CDR_Rate,;
 curHelp.CDR_Duration,;
 curHelp.CDR_billdur,;
 curHelp.CDR_Charge;
 FROM curHelp,;
 INNER JOIN curSum;
 ON curSum.CDR_Uni==curHelp.CDR_Uni;
 AND curSum.CDR_Code==curHelp.CDR_Code;
 INTO CURSOR curHelp1
*now we should have the rates for the longest possible code

*************** /new part **************************

SET RELATION TO CDR_Uni INTO CDR
*This is a 1 To 1 relation so no need to SET SKIP
REPLACE;
 CDR.Rate    WITH CDR_Rate,;
 CDR.DEST    WITH CDR_Dest,;
 CDR.CODE    WITH CDR_Code,;
 CDR.BillDur WITH CDR_BillDur,;
 CDR.Charge  WITH CDR_Charge;
 ALL

SET RELATION TO
USE
USE IN curSum
USE IN curHelp
SELECT cdr
SET ORDER TO

HTH

Agnes