How do Monks programatically construct SQL selects.

I don't.

Indeed. It's interesting how this particular question comes up again and again. Yes, SQL queries can be generated, but when you start using a normalized schema auto-generated queries tend to fall down. In order to get good, repeatable performance it is essential to write well behaved queries (i.e. queries where the JOIN and/or WHERE clauses use appropriate indexes) as a single badly written query can bring even very powerful hardware to its knees...

This is one of the reasons why I always try to use stored procedures where I can.

Michael