So I have a table containing different elements and dates. It basically looks like this:

actieElement    beginDatum
1               1/01/2010
1               1/01/2010
1               10/01/2010
2               1/02/2010
2               3/02/2010

What I now need is the smallest date for every actieElement. I've found a solution using a simple GROUP BY statement, but that way the query loses its scope and you can't change anything anymore.

Without the GROUP BY statement I get multiple dates for every actieElement because certain dates are the same.

I thought of something like this, but it also does not work as it would give the subquery more then 1 record:

SELECT s1.actieElement, s1.begindatum
FROM tblActieElementLink AS s1
WHERE (((s1.actieElement)=(SELECT TOP 1 (s2.actieElement)
          FROM tblActieElementLink  s2
          WHERE s1.actieElement = s2.actieElement
          ORDER BY s2.begindatum ASC)));