>>Right... what we need is an aggregate function any(), which would mean "the first value you get, I don't care in which order". That one would be fast, and simpler than min() or max().
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>Sorry Dragan,
>
>but I cannot see the usability of this random aggregate function.

What's the usability of calculating the max() of a character field in a lookup table, which is the same for all records in a group? This would do the same, just much faster.