I`m a Senior SAS/SQL programmer/Analyst by day and by night a bourbon drinking, cigar smoking piano player who loves hard drive recording and audio/video production projects. I`m much more proficient at SAS {45 years experience}, and unlike most programmer, enjoy SQL and SAS equally. There are definitely advantages to SQL, including the joins. Those SAS merges can be tricky. ONe rookie mistake is omitting msglevel=i which an warn to if a variable in your secondary file is going to overwrite a variable from your primary file. In this case, SQL is preferable because you do not have to rename and presort, and you only select the variables you need. Plus it usually faster. On the other hand, SAS beats SQL when it comes to writing out files or ranking. It is also much easier to write great reports, FTP or email results etc... Also, something as simple as the filevar statement for example, will allow you you create multiple output files in am few lines of code. In SQLplus, writing a csv file is much more cumbersome. I am Blessed to love learning, and every day I manage to learn something new inboth SAS and SQL. I also love to used my dusty school teaching degree to share my experience. Mostly I love my three granddaughters. ©