how to deal with Memo fields listed in a SELECT query, in foxpro 9?

Question

i have a query where i need to use the DISTINCT keyword, the issue is that a field i have in the select is of type MEMO (needs to be so because of its large content...).

SELECT distinct customerid, commentdate, commenttext....

is not accepted in FOXPRO 9 because commenttext field is f type Memo ! any idea?

Solution

You have a couple of options, depending on your needs:

1) Omit the memo field from the query. 2) Use an expression to convert the memo field to character. For example, LEFT(commenttext,254).

Are you really trying to apply distinct to the memo field, as well? What's your actual goal here?

Tamar