I do join the tables, but also having the rows PersonID and SkillID from the righthand site. Reason: I want a full list of all skills and their possible association to a person: Left Join ;-)
Yes, i did that just to begin with, but sorted it out - for the moment at least. I want to hide away sql code and table structure as much as possible. Also, doing it that way is the more Client-Server approach, which brings me the benefit of not having to load all the data to the local machine for, lets say, joining them. This is fast and for a VPN-connection based system desirable.