Fabio,
Thanks for you reply

I have 2 questions

When you say .....

In general, this should return the data of METHOD1

select DISTINCT iciwhs.citemno,iciwhs.cwarehouse;
from iciwhs inner join sotemp1 ;
on allt(sotemp1.citemno)+allt(sotemp1.cwarehouse)=allt(iciwhs.citemno)+allt(iciwhs.cwarehouse);
into table c:\temp\method2

1.) What exactly do you mean by in general it should return the same results?
What would the exceptional cases be ?
AND
Is your method above preferable to using a subquery or would the subquery cover these exceptions?

-Carmel