Silvela, Jaime (Exchange) wrote:
The obvoious way to get the latest measurement of type A would be to
join the table against

SELECT object_id, object_val_type_id, max(observation_date)
FROM object_val
GROUP BY object_id, object_val_type_id

I'm not sure this is actually the result you want; doesn't this give you all the unique (object_id, object_val_type_id)'s combined with the max observation_date in the table (as in, not necessarily related to the records listed)?

I'd think you want this:
 SELECT object_id, object_val_type_id, observation_date
 FROM object_val
 GROUP BY object_id, object_val_type_id, observation_date
 HAVING observation_date = max(observation_date)

Which'd return a single record with the highest observation_date. Though not strictly necessary, I can imagine you'd want observation_date to be unique, or you could get grouped observations with the same date.

Although ordering and limiting is probably faster.
I don't think the planner is intelligent enough to know that this would only return the record with the highest observation_date - it may be smart enough to reject ("drop from the result set") found records after finding ones with a higher observation_date (which'd be "interesting" when using cursors) or something along those lines. Hmm... Now I'm all curious; an EXPLAIN'd be interesting...

Sorry for the mostly useless post :P

Regards,
--
Alban Hertroys
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

magproductions b.v.

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