vanderghast wrote:
How can you claim with authority that they are not good if you are
not even sure about how they should work in the first place?

Min and Max can replace First and Last if there is just one field
aggregated with First, or Last, but not if there is more than a
single field so aggregated. How could you replace FIRST in the
following query, with MIN / MAX:

SELECT f1, FIRST(f2), FIRST(f3) FROM table GROUP BY f1

where the goal of that statement is to get a (one) record, for each
group value.
Considering the data:

f1 f2 f3
10 1 50
10 1 50
10 50 1
10 100 50
10 50 100
10 50 1
10 50 100


(just for illustration, but someone should not think that this data
represent all possibilities).

And come with a simple, or not, solution, implying MIN (or MAX)... or
change your claim about FIRST/LAST "shouldn't even be an option to
use".

Well of course, in Access, given this dataset, we would have to advise using
FIRST, since there appears to be no field that can be used to provide the
sort order for this data, besides your whim when you set it up. I would also
have to add the proviso: don't be too shocked if FIRST does not return the
"correct" results someday. There is no guarantee that the database engine
will not choose to return the results in some other order someday.

If there was a field or fields that could be used to provide this particular
order, then I would offer some variation of Ken's advice.


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