To answer your question title, "How to use Rank() in SQL Server," this is how it works:
I will use this set of data as an example:
create table #tmp
(
column1 varchar(3),
column2 varchar(5),
column3 datetime,
column4 int
)
insert into #tmp values ('AAA', 'SKA', '2013-02-01 00:00:00', 10)
insert into #tmp values ('AAA', 'SKA', '2013-01-31 00:00:00', 15)
insert into #tmp values ('AAA', 'SKB', '2013-01-31 00:00:00', 20)
insert into #tmp values ('AAA', 'SKB', '2013-01-15 00:00:00', 5)
insert into #tmp values ('AAA', 'SKC', '2013-02-01 00:00:00', 25)
You have a partition which basically specifies grouping.
In this example, if you partition by column2, the rank function will create ranks for groups of column2 values. There will be different ranks for rows where column2 = 'SKA' than rows where column2 = 'SKB' and so on.
The ranks are decided like this: The rank for every record is one plus the number of ranks that come before it in its partition. The rank will only increment when one of the fields you selected (other than the partitioned field(s)) is different than the ones that come before it. If all of the selected fields are the same, then the ranks will tie and both will be assigned the value, one.
Knowing this, if we only wanted to select one value from each group in column two, we could use this query:
with cte as
(
select *,
rank() over (partition by column2
order by column3) rnk
from t
) select * from cte where rnk = 1 order by column3;
COLUMN1 | COLUMN2 | COLUMN3 |COLUMN4 | RNK
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AAA | SKB | January, 15 2013 00:00:00+0000 |5 | 1
AAA | SKA | January, 31 2013 00:00:00+0000 |15 | 1
AAA | SKC | February, 01 2013 00:00:00+0000 |25 | 1