>Fabio,
>
>There is a benefit - the fact of adding/removing GROUP BY or DISTINCT clause does not modify meaning of the ORDER BY clause.

This is incorrect, with VFP ORDER BY search fieldname rules
adding/removing GROUP BY or DISTINCT clause modify meaning of the ORDER BY clause.
In some cases the result is invariant (is the cases to which you is thinking),
but the meant one changes.

* no ambiguous ORDER BY
* mean: order S.fieldname, and after fill the fieldName
SELECT S.fieldname AS fieldName FROM sourceTable S ORDER BY  S.fieldname
* mean: fill the resultfieldname and after order resultfieldname
SELECT S.fieldname AS resultfieldname FROM sourceTable S ORDER BY  resultfieldname

* then, for having one coherente grammatical, the ambiguous have to be solved with:
* mean: fill the fieldName and after order fieldname
SELECT S.fieldname AS fieldName FROM sourceTable S ORDER BY fieldName

* mean: fill the fieldName and after order fieldname
SELECT S.fieldname AS fieldName FROM sourceTable S ORDER BY  1

Add DISTINCT don't change the mean.

Of course you can apply the invariance rules, and to change that what comes effectively ordered,
but the meant one is that one written into the syntax.

If you are sure, post a example with benefit, where my definition is lacked.

>
>If I remember correctly, you were so anxious to have similar benefit with the syntax for correlated UPDATE (thread #989905). I wonder what is the reason for your inconsistent position? Is it an opportunity to call something a bug?
>
>Thanks,
>Aleksey.
>

My UPDATE syntax definition and ORDER BY are coherent, and aliasName or tableName correlation it is defined without ambiguity.

Fabio