This is essentially a question about constructing an SQL query. The db is implemented with sqlite3. I am a relatively new user of SQL. I have two tables and want to join them in an unusual way. The following is an example to explain the problem. Table 1 (t1): id year name ------------------------- 297 2010 Charles 298 2011 David 300 2010 Peter 301 2011 Richard Table 2 (t2) id year food --------------------------- 296 2009 Bananas 296 2011 Bananas 297 2009 Melon 297 2010 Coffee 297 2012 Cheese 298 2007 Sugar 298 2008 Cereal 298 2012 Chocolate 299 2000 Peas 300 2007 Barley 300 2011 Beans 300 2012 Chickpeas 301 2010 Watermelon I want to join the tables on id and year. The catch is that (1) id must match exactly, but if there is no exact match in Table 2 for the year in Table 1, then I want to choose the year that is the next (lower) available. A selection of the kind that I want to produce would give the following result id year matchyr name food ------------------------------------------------- 297 2010 2010 Charles Coffee 298 2011 2008 David Cereal 300 2010 2007 Peter Barley 301 2011 2010 Richard Watermelon To summarise, id=297 had an exact match for year=2010 given in Table 1, so the corresponding line for id=297, year=2010 is chosen from Table 2. id=298, year=2011 did not have a matching year in Table 2, so the next available year (less than 2011) is chosen. As you can see, I would also like to know what that matched year (whether exactly , or inexactly) actually was. I would very much appreciate (1) an indication (yes/no answer) of whether this is possible to do in SQL alone, or whether I need to look outside SQL, and (2) a solution, if that is not too onerous.