has there ever been a more controversial question of the day? Someone please close down this topic before my righteous ire bubbles over and I am forces to take to...

Count me in with the dissenters... shall I get my pitchfork?

Would splitting the 2 tables into 3 work?

membertable (membid, groupid)

grouptable(groupid, name, mstrid)

mastertable(mstrid,groupid,membid)

Or have I completely missed the point?

If it's any use one of the guys in my office has a similar prob... He reckons it'll be sorted with the new Vista service pack (whenever that comes out).

Thanks for that reference Gail... trianglar/x-joins joins are evil... though I seem to remember using them once to put together some test data.

and point taken about the 2000 forum... I...

nice

thanks for that... should have mentioned that I'm connecting to 2000... (crucial info missing)...

I have found the following though which seems to work

select (select SUM(1) from view1 where na_primary...