I pasted a working query from sql server into vfp of the form:

select substring(myfield,1,2) as myfield_ from mytable group by substring(myfield,1,2)

and changed it to:
select substr(myfield,1,2) as myfield_ from mytable group by substr(myfield,1,2) in vfp

This results in in either 'sql colum "" is not found, or "group by clause is missing or invalid",

But in vfp:
select substr(myfield,1,2) as myfield_ from mytable group by myfield_
works, but doesn't work in sql server (column not found error)

I assume the SQL Server is 'ansi standard'? Is there a way to get VFP to behave like sql server? I tried all settings of set enginebehavior, but this didn't help.