the explain of this sentence shows that mysql uses temporary tables, and this was slow (think about the sentence only takes one record in his Limit Clause) of course all the fields used in relations and orders in the sentence are primary keys. SELECT CPOSTAL.* FROM CPOSTAL left JOIN PROVINCI ON CPOSTAL.COD=PROVINCI.COD AND CPOSTAL.PAIS=PROVINCI.PAIS ORDER BY CPOSTAL.IND LIMIT 1 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php