Hello, I have data in a hierarchical tree structure in one table (tree_tbl) containing the number of students enrolled in a college course. The college course name is stored as a tree giving the college name, department, and course name, and perhaps other descendent nodes such as section name. I have another table (node_tbl) that contains the particular nodes I am interested in such as the name of the college, department or course. I'd like to join the two tables so I can aggregate the total students in all courses containing the node names in the node_tbl. Unfortunately, I've been unable to solve this problem and was hoping for help. I had tried using the ltree data type for this purpose, but am open to other suggestions if a better data type exists. Here is an example of what I'm trying to do: CREATE TABLE tree_tbl (course LTREE, students INTEGER); INSERT INTO tree_tbl VALUES ('Arts.English.Shakespeare', 10); INSERT INTO tree_tbl VALUES ('Arts.Music.Composition', 15); INSERT INTO tree_tbl VALUES ('Arts.Music.Theory', 11); INSERT INTO tree_tbl VALUES ('Science.Math.Algebra', 21); INSERT INTO tree_tbl VALUES ('Science.Biology.IntroBio.SectionA', 20); INSERT INTO tree_tbl VALUES ('Science.Biology.IntroBio.SectionB', 30); INSERT INTO tree_tbl VALUES ('Science.Biology.Genetics', 3); CREATE TABLE node_tbl (node TEXT); INSERT INTO node_tbl VALUES ('Arts'); INSERT INTO node_tbl VALUES ('English'); INSERT INTO node_tbl VALUES ('Biology'); I would then like to join these two tables so that I can sum the total number of students in each area. Something like this: SELECT n.node, sum(students) as students FROM tree_tbl t, node_tbl n WHERE t.course ~ '.*' || n.node || '.*' GROUP BY n.node; My hope that this query would return this: node students ------- -------- Arts 36 English 10 Biology 53 Unfortunately, this query gives the error: ERROR: syntax error at position 0 LINE 3: WHERE t.course ~ '.*' || n.node || '.*' ^ Any help with this problem would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Robert McGehee -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general