>>Conforming to standards is fine, to a point. At that point, Set ... 70 would be my choice.
>
>Well, I spent 20 hours since last night to convert about 40 SQLs. All of them were as long as those I posted here last night. So, that gives you an idea of all the work I've been into since then. But, now it's done. So, at least, I can say that my application is ANSI SQL compliant.

If that has been your goal... fine. That's specially important if you plan to move your data to an ANSI SQL compliant server - in that case, you've done your homework in advance.

OTOH, even in that case, if I had to write some internal SQL juggling of data between VFP cursors - well, as long as that's in the part which is not likely to be transferred to the server, I wouldn't mind being incompliant if it would save me few hours of recoding something that already works.

It's more a matter of choice and looking ahead. Now if I've said that these limitations (no memos and all fields either in group by or aggregate functions) are ridiculous, I'm probably not alone, and sooner or later the standard may change in that area. A simple AsIs(field) aggregate function would solve the second one (or both), wouldn't it?