[sql] Eliminating duplicate values based on only one column of the table

My query:

SELECT sites.siteName, sites.siteIP, history.date
FROM sites INNER JOIN
     history ON sites.siteName = history.siteName
ORDER BY siteName,date

First part of the output:

How can I remove the duplicates in siteName column? I want to leave only the updated one based on date column.

In the example output above, I need the rows 1, 3, 6, 10

I solve such queries using this pattern:

SELECT *
FROM t
WHERE t.field=(
  SELECT MAX(t.field) 
  FROM t AS t0 
  WHERE t.group_column1=t0.group_column1
    AND t.group_column2=t0.group_column2 ...)

That is it will select records where the value of a field is at its max value. To apply it to your query I used the common table expression so that I don't have to repeat the JOIN twice:

WITH site_history AS (
  SELECT sites.siteName, sites.siteIP, history.date
  FROM sites
  JOIN history USING (siteName)
)
SELECT *
FROM site_history h
WHERE date=(
  SELECT MAX(date) 
  FROM site_history h0 
  WHERE h.siteName=h0.siteName)
ORDER BY siteName

It's important to note that it works only if the field we're calculating the maximum for is unique. In your example the date field should be unique for each siteName, that is if the IP can't be changed multiple times per millisecond. In my experience this is commonly the case otherwise you don't know which record is the newest anyway. If the history table has an unique index for (site, date), this query is also very fast, index range scan on the history table scanning just the first item can be used.

From your example it seems reasonable to assume that the siteIP column is determined by the siteName column (that is, each site has only one siteIP). If this is indeed the case, then there is a simple solution using group by:

select
  sites.siteName,
  sites.siteIP,
  max(history.date)
from sites
inner join history on
  sites.siteName=history.siteName
group by
  sites.siteName,
  sites.siteIP
order by
  sites.siteName;

However, if my assumption is not correct (that is, it is possible for a site to have multiple siteIP), then it is not clear from you question which siteIP you want the query to return in the second column. If just any siteIP, then the following query will do:

select
  sites.siteName,
  min(sites.siteIP),
  max(history.date)
from sites
inner join history on
  sites.siteName=history.siteName
group by
  sites.siteName
order by
  sites.siteName;