<< Left outer joins would fix this.>>

I tried that, but they take "forever" (and a day)--in fact, even adding ONE
left join solidifies the statement into a petrified quagmire of
battle-hardened, world-weary Mega-molasses.

<<If the Excellent and Good replies are effectively hard-coded and don't
need to change you could do it more simply with a case statement>>

Inside a SQL statement?

Clay Shannon,
Dimension 4 Software