The change is documented in VFP8 help under Behavior Changes Since Visual FoxPro 7.0 and INFO: SQL SELECT Behavior Changes in Visual FoxPro 8.0 mskb #813361.

>The following select query worked OK when run previously in v7 against the source data but not OK when run in v8 against the same source data derived from the same origin with the same initiating sqlexec() sql query.
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>The desired resultant data is being 'selected' as shown below from a source view of data initially derived from an sqlexec(handle, "SELECT data FROM JOINED tables, etc", to_cursor) type select statement gathering the original data that is to be queried by this next sql statement (as below) from an W2K SQL database that has not changed.
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>The question here is: Why is v8 objecting to this syntax whereas v7 has no problem with it? In v8, running the whole query (including the initial sqlexec() part to gather the source data) now gives error message: "SQL: GROUP BY clause is missing or invalid."
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>Here is the statement: (Note. the && ...comments... shown below are not in the actual query as run; they are included herein only for reference to help clarify the underlying data that is being queried)

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>Or any other single field such as "a.control" and changing GROUP BY to matching "a.control" immediatly results in the query running without problem, but add back any other field so now the query calls for 2 or more fields, and the same error message is given.
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>So what am I doing wrong or what has changed between v7 and v8 that makes this query no longer runnable? TIA. /psb