Hello, I'm trying to join 2 members of one file table with a first member of a second table. This is in rpgle, trying to use sql. problem: sometimes i'm allowed to create a synonym over each member and sometimes I'm not. How can I find out if this is a permission issue or something else. Also these files will have roughly 15m records. 11m and 4 m. I'm joining on a single field in each. I'm just trying to get count (unique) of recs. in one that are in the other. I want to create the syns. on the fly then drop them later. any ideas on optimization or finding out about authorities . Thank you. any help will be appreciated.