The statement was taken from here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/group-by-hidden-columns.html So what does this statement even mean? What will be returned in the c.name projection? MAX(c.name)? ANY(c.name)? FIRST(c.name)? NULL ? 42? According to the documentation, ANY(c.name) would best describe what’s going on. This peculiar syntax is probably quite clever for those few that really