You keep reading something that is not present in my posts. I never said that GROUP BY controls what records are returned.

>Ok. I'm still not getting it.
>
>There are different things going on here - selection, grouping and ordering.
>
>Correct me if I'm wrong here:
>
>SELECT determine which records to return, not how they're returned.
>
>GROUP BY puts like records together in the dataset based on the columns in the GROUP BY clause.
>
>ORER BY sorts them within their groups.
>
>
>So what does GROUP BY have to do with what records are returned?
>
>
>
>
>>There's no ORDER BY in the query and even if there was one, it's applied after GROUP BY not before.
>>
>>
>>>In the query #2 from wich record do you expect result value for Descript would come from for each group? SQL Engine does not have this info and cannot proceed.
>>>
>>>The question of 'which record' is answered by the WHERE clause, is it not? I always thought GROUP BY determined the physical order of the records in the result set, not which records are returned.
>>>
>>>So in your example #2, since, you said 'ORDER BY Code', then record #1 would be first, then record #2, based off the values in the code field.
>>>
>>>I don't see what I'm missing.
>>>
>>>
>>>>

>>>>Table: mytable
>>>>Code Descript Qty
>>>>  1  One      110
>>>>  1  OneOne   120
>>>>  2  Two      210
>>>>  2  Two      220
>>>>
>>>>-- #1
>>>>SELECT Code, SUM(Qty) FROM mytable GROUP BY Code
>>>>Result
>>>>Code Qty
>>>>  1  230
>>>>  2  430
>>>>
>>>>-- #2
>>>>SELECT Code, Descript, SUM(Qty) FROM mytable GROUP BY Code
>>>>Result
>>>>Code Descript  Qty
>>>>  1  ?         230
>>>>  2  ?         430
>>>>

>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>"....than SQL engine wouldn't know what record it should come from"