>After thinking about this some more I realized I don't really need anything from the parent table. Everything I need can be had from the child table. Just 3 fields CUSTID, _YEAR, and AMOUNT, where I select only the most recent year. This should simplify it a bit. It should look something like:
>

>select custid, max(_year), amount ;
>from orders ;
>group by custid 
>

>
>This seems to work with the first 2 fields but fails when I add the third even when I tweak the GROUP BY clause.


Then use just a part of the query :-)))

CREATE CURSOR Customers (CustId I, Name C(200))
FOR lnFor = 1 TO 20
    INSERT INTO Customers VALUES (lnFor, [Name ]+TRANSFORM(lnFor))
NEXT

CREATE CURSOR Orders (CustId I, Date D, Amount N(10,2))
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (1, DATE(), 200)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (1, DATE(), 100)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (1, DATE(), 50)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (1, DATE()-1, 200)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (1, DATE()-1, 2300)

INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (2, DATE(), 800)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (2, DATE(), 900)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (2, DATE(), 150)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (2, DATE()-1, 1200)
INSERT INTO Orders VALUES (2, DATE()-1, 32300)




SELECT Orders.CustId,;
       Orders.Date,;
       SUM(Orders.Amount) AS Amount;
FROM Orders;
     INNER JOIN (SELECT CustId,;  
                        MAX(Date) AS Date;
                        FROM Orders;
                 GROUP BY CustId) TblMaxdate;
           ON Orders.CustId = TblMaxdate.CustId AND;
               Orders.Date   = TblMaxdate.Date;
GROUP BY Orders.CustId, Orders.Date