Michael Avila wrote:
I have a table which keeps track of the status of members. In the table is

member_id int(8)
status_code char(1)
status_date date
KEY member_id (member_id,status_code,status_date)


Each member can have multiple records because a record is added each time
the status changes but the old record is kept for history.

What I want to do is find the latest status for each member.

Michael Fuhr has already described on solution, but if you can alter the table definition then there might be a neater solution.

Replace "status_date" with "status_expires" and make it a "timestamp with time zone". Set the expiry to 'infinity' for the current record and you then have a simple select to find the most recent.

If you regularly want to find which record was active on a particular time you'll want two columns: valid_from and valid_to. This makes it much easier to find a row for a specific date.
--
  Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd

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