So I jumped in feet first and got the read version of QODBC and am learning real fast it is not like running QB in SQL!   I understand why, but I need to know if my ultimate goal is even obtainable.   I have a company file that is holding 5 years of data.  I am not sure how to get the row stats of the file as if I run the VB Demo and do a select count(*) against any large tables , I never get results.  

Example would be SELECT count(*) FROM checkitemline - This return Zero.   Seems wrong since there is 40K checks in the check register, and takes 5 minutes to run the query.   Is there a row limit on table scans?

But the goal of all this lies here.   I am tasked to gather employee pay amounts grouped by paycheck period and separated into departments for the last 3 years.   Prior until right now, no classes existed, and no checks were classed when written.   I edited every employee and set their class to one of 5 classes to sort them out.  This of course does nothing to the payments written to them in the past, so I was hoping that a join like this would work.

I am not sure of all the tables required as this is just a guess but join these tables

Employee

Check

CheckItemLine

Class

and since all paychecks are written once a week at the same time

Group them by date in the check table

and Sum them by class

So once I figure out the SQL for this will it even be executable on a QuickBooks file that is 200mb in size?

SELECT count(*) FROM check

As far as the task ACTUALLY in hand is concerned, try something like this:

SELECT Employee.PayrollInfoClassRefFullName, sum(Transaction.Amount) as Amount 
FROM Transaction, Employee
where Transaction.EntityRefListID=Employee.ListID
and Transaction.TxnType='Paycheck'
and (Transaction.TxnDate >= {d'2007-01-01'} and Transaction.TxnDate < {d'2008-01-01'})
Group by Employee.PayrollInfoClassRefFullName

Tom-

Thanks for helping so much.   Your SQL was very close to what I needed.    I will post the final SQL so if anyone sees this they wil have what they need.   This SQL returns a payroll date, the class, and the sum of payroll for the class that the employee is currently in for the specified date range.

Enjoy!