>I was positive that the 1st would return an error because the query would return 2 records.
>
>I was expecting the 2nd to fail as well for the same reason, but it just picks the last value of the name alphabetically sorted (ascending), just more or less VFP does when SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR is set to 70. Wierd.

Yup, the 2nd one behaves differently than the first. (So Naomi and Sergey were right on, and you were close) :)

I used this example when I taught T-SQL, as an example of querying into scalar values....that the first method was sometimes preferable precisely because a person will get an error. The second (at least IMHO) is worse because it's potentially masking an issue.

Another post coming - I found an interesting quirk with IN that I wasn't aware of until recently.