>>See, in the last paragraph pasted, where it says "ONLY THE FINAL SELECT CAN HAVE AN ORDER BY CLAUSE. . ."????
>>
>>By the way, I seem to have had trouble reading today, but I did *not* see anything in the Help specifying that TOP must be in the first. Where did you get that from???
>
>It doesn't say it in clear. But, in the SELECT's syntax/template, "TOP" is in the first SELECT (or, before "UNION", anyway). So, this is where I got it. Still, I agree with your logic: since ORDER BY and TOP are related, etc.
>
>>And I don't really know what you mean by "ORDER BY works fine with SELECT *", since I don't think I ever said there was a problem there.
>
>Oops! My mistake. It should have been "UNION" and not "ORDER BY". Anyway, UNION and TOP work fine with SELECT *.
>
>I wonder how large a complete doc on SELECT would be. I also wonder how many would read it. :) And I wonder how many would know it. :)
>
>Have a nice weekend,
>Vlad

I found this site on SQL, you may find it helpful. It *diagrams* the syntax!

http://www-dbs.inf.ethz.ch/~infosys/syntax_diagramme/

HTH