Following up my treaty rate thoughts, if I'm trying to get the lowest treaty payee (and rate) from a specific list of payees for every possible payor country, the following seems to work, but is it right? I'm specifically wondering about the group by clauses. (Or if there is a better way.) [table treaties has columns payor,payee,rate and in this sample, I'm just trying to find which country payee between Ireland and the Netherlands has the lowest rate from each individual payor country.]
select a.payor,a.payee,a.rate from treaties a, (select payor,min(rentr) from treaties where payee in ('Ireland','Netherlands') group by payor ) b where a.payor=b.payor and a.rate = b.min and payee in ('Ireland','Netherlands') group by a.payor, a.payee, a.rate