First Emp Associated with Record

[jgelpi16]

I have a dilemma that is driving me a little crazy...

I have records with ID numbers associated. The ID number can occur in the table multiple times and the Employee associated with that ID number could be different for each occurance of the ID number. What I want is the first employee associated with that ID number and that is it.

Example:

IDNum Employee
1234 John Smith
1234 Ann Jones
5678 Bobby James
5678 Joe Cool

Values Returned:

IDNum Employee
1234 John Smith
5678 Bobby James

The problem I am running into is the employee name is coming from one table, the IDNum is coming from another table and I have a third table that houses the employee phone number. In that regard I cannot do a simple "first" criteria.

[weekend00]

Your logic if so strange. what was the IDnum design for? it can not identify anything.

Yes need sub queries to use the "first" function.
Query1: firstEmployee
select IDnum, first(table1.employee) as employee from table1 group by idnum.

Query2: other information
select firstEmployee.IDnum, firstEmployee.employee ... from firstEmployee,table2,tabl3 where firstEmployee.employee=table2.employee and firstEmployee.employee=table3.employee

[ajetrumpet]

the data needs to be normalized jg. the setup you have will not work in the long run. if you have time, i would suggest changing it up to match a 3-dimensional layout. gl!

[jgelpi16]

Thanks for your input. Yes, the way I explained it my logic was very screwy and I apologize. I actually figured out a very simple way to isolate the userid through a separate query.