>>>>What is the easiest way to select the first record based on a single field?
>>>
>>>See SELECT TOP 1 ...
>>
>>I should have given a better explanation of what I am looking for.
>>
>>If I have several records for companyA and several records for companyB and several for companyC, what is the easiest way to select the first record for each company?
>
>You've to provide a definition of the first record in terms of the table fields.

Here is the list of fields in the table. The only fields that will contain duplicate values are dc_id and dc_nme.

dc_id
prd_id_suf
invc_dsc
dc_nme
new_id
new_date
prev_id
ship_dte