Rodd,

Try

SELECT personno, category, level ;
	FROM misshist ms1 ;
	WHERE fromdate IN ;
	(SELECT MIN(fromdate) FROM misshist ms2 ;
			WHERE category = 'R' AND ms2.personno = ms1.personno)

>If I have a table of the following:
>

>FROMDATE    TODATE      CATEGORY    LEVEL
>01/01/1998  01/01/1999     O          1
>01/02/1999  05/23/1999     O          2
>05/24/1999  08/14/2001     A          1
>08/15/2001  08/01/2002     R          1
>08/02/2002  10/10/2003     R          3
>10/11/2003  10/31/2003     R          4
>11/01/2003  12/01/2003     O          2
>12/02/2003  02/15/2004     X          1
>02/16/2004                 R          3
>

>I need to find what level this person was the first time they became a category R. The categories and levels have no predefined sequence (i.e. R doesn't always follow O or A and 2 does not always follow 1, etc).
>
>The only way I know to do this now is something like:
>
>

>select personno, category, level from misshist;
>  where personno + dtoc(fromdate,1) in;
>  (select personno + dtoc(min(fromdate),1) from misshist where category = 'R' group by personno)
>

>
>It seems like I can't rely on getting the correct level if I do:
>

>select personno, category, level, min(fromdate);
> from misshist;
> where category = 'R';
> group by personno
>

>
>(I left personno out of the above table. It would be a unique identifier by individual. The records I showed above would be for 1 individual (i.e. they would all have the same personno)).
>
>Is there any cleaner way to accomplish this?