Ron, the first of your four queries work fine with the data you provided, but the fourth...

Ok, I think I get it. Its just saying where b.id = any part of a.id, starting at the beginning of a.id. So, I am trying to figure...

Chris, that looks like a nifty little trick, what exactly is the '%' doing?

[/quote]Kipp, you're still stuck on this? Based on the mock up that I did, what results do you expect to get?[/quote]

Yesterday he said he won't be back until...

Ok, not really what I meant. Please take some time to read Jeff's article on how to post a question and data in order to facilitate someone's helping you.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/

Greg

Kipp, if table a.id *always* has periods, you could try this:

SELECT

a.*

FROM TableA a LEFT OUTER JOIN

...

Concatanation should be easy, if you provide table structure and sample data.

If it does not matter which one you see, then why not just exclude ProgramID from the results altogether?

SELECT DISTINCT

a.Term, b.shortname

FROM...

Well it wasn't really missing, but rather was turned into the yellow face when I pasted the code in the block. I did not know how to get rid...

John, I might be over simplifying this, but it seems to me a function would work nicely here. You should be able to change your table names, and make...

Jeff, as long as I am around, you needn't worry that everyone already knows anything.

Greg

Jeff, same thing with DATALENGTH. Its not a big deal, just one of those things I don't get. I don't know if it matters, but when I copied...

Thanks mrpolecat. That does seem much simpler. I can never think of what seems like the obvious, simple solution.

Greg

Jeff, I have found that information helpful to a format file newbie is hard to come by. Maybe you know of an article that explains it a bit better...

If you can do it through EM, instead of...