>That there were problems in prior VFPx releases in this area (incorrect results of DISTINCT and incomplete GROUP BY).

These are simple to see. I'm writing this off the top of my head, so the code is untested, but here's the gist.

First, for DISTINCT:

CREATE CURSOR HasMemo1 (iFK I, mNotes M)
INSERT INTO HasMemo VALUES (1, "This is the first note")
INSERT INTO HasMemo VALUES (2, "This is the second note")

CREATE CURSOR HasMemo2 (iFK I, mNotes M)
INSERT INTO HasMemo VALUES (1, "This is a different note")
INSERT INTO HasMemo VALUES (2, "So is this")

SELECT * FROM HasMemo1 ;
UNION ;
SELECT * FROM HasMemo2 ;
INTO CURSOR Result

You get only two records in the result, not four, because the memos aren't compared.

For GROUP BY, consider this one:

OPEN DATABASE HOME(2)+"TasTrade\Data\TasTrade"
SELECT customer_id, MAX(order_date), freight ;
   FROM orders ;
   GROUP BY 1 ;
   INTO CURSOR result

The values for Freight don't match up with the most recent order.

Tamar