For example, I have a wrapper that uses the returned column names to form object attribute names. Attribute names must start with an alphabetic character or underscore, and may contain only alphanumerics and underscores. So a SQL statement such as **select max(y) from x** will return a single column of results with the name **max(y)**. If you attempted to use this as an attribute name, explosions would occur. I don't know what you are using to access the returned data so perhaps it does not "like" the parenthesis and just drops the data silently rather than failing quickly and loudly.