[sql] Get top 1 row of each group

I have a table which I want to get the latest entry for each group. Here's the table:

DocumentStatusLogs Table

|ID| DocumentID | Status | DateCreated |
| 2| 1          | S1     | 7/29/2011   |
| 3| 1          | S2     | 7/30/2011   |
| 6| 1          | S1     | 8/02/2011   |
| 1| 2          | S1     | 7/28/2011   |
| 4| 2          | S2     | 7/30/2011   |
| 5| 2          | S3     | 8/01/2011   |
| 6| 3          | S1     | 8/02/2011   |

The table will be grouped by DocumentID and sorted by DateCreated in descending order. For each DocumentID, I want to get the latest status.

My preferred output:

| DocumentID | Status | DateCreated |
| 1          | S1     | 8/02/2011   |
| 2          | S3     | 8/01/2011   |
| 3          | S1     | 8/02/2011   |

• Is there any aggregate function to get only the top from each group? See pseudo-code GetOnlyTheTop below:

  SELECT
    DocumentID,
    GetOnlyTheTop(Status),
    GetOnlyTheTop(DateCreated)
  FROM DocumentStatusLogs
  GROUP BY DocumentID
  ORDER BY DateCreated DESC
  

• If such function doesn't exist, is there any way I can achieve the output I want?

• Or at the first place, could this be caused by unnormalized database? I'm thinking, since what I'm looking for is just one row, should that status also be located in the parent table?

Please see the parent table for more information:

Current Documents Table

| DocumentID | Title  | Content  | DateCreated |
| 1          | TitleA | ...      | ...         |
| 2          | TitleB | ...      | ...         |
| 3          | TitleC | ...      | ...         |

Should the parent table be like this so that I can easily access its status?

| DocumentID | Title  | Content  | DateCreated | CurrentStatus |
| 1          | TitleA | ...      | ...         | s1            |
| 2          | TitleB | ...      | ...         | s3            |
| 3          | TitleC | ...      | ...         | s1            |

UPDATE I just learned how to use "apply" which makes it easier to address such problems.

This is one of the most easily found question on the topic, so I wanted to give a modern answer to the it (both for my reference and to help others out). By using first_value and over you can make short work of the above query:

Select distinct DocumentID
  , first_value(status) over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated Desc) as Status
  , first_value(DateCreated) over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated Desc) as DateCreated
From DocumentStatusLogs

This should work in Sql Server 2008 and up. First_value can be thought of as a way to accomplish Select Top 1 when using an over clause. Over allows grouping in the select list so instead of writing nested subqueries (like many of the existing answers do), this does it in a more readable fashion. Hope this helps.

Verifying Clint's awesome and correct answer from above:

The performance between the two queries below is interesting. 52% being the top one. And 48% being the second one. A 4% improvement in performance using DISTINCT instead of ORDER BY. But ORDER BY has the advantage to sort by multiple columns.

IF (OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#DocumentStatusLogs') IS NOT NULL) BEGIN DROP TABLE #DocumentStatusLogs END

CREATE TABLE #DocumentStatusLogs (
    [ID] int NOT NULL,
    [DocumentID] int NOT NULL,
    [Status] varchar(20),
    [DateCreated] datetime
)

INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (2, 1, 'S1', '7/29/2011 1:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (3, 1, 'S2', '7/30/2011 2:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (6, 1, 'S1', '8/02/2011 3:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (1, 2, 'S1', '7/28/2011 4:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (4, 2, 'S2', '7/30/2011 5:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (5, 2, 'S3', '8/01/2011 6:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (6, 3, 'S1', '8/02/2011 7:00:00')

Option 1:

    SELECT
    [Extent1].[ID], 
    [Extent1].[DocumentID],
    [Extent1].[Status], 
    [Extent1].[DateCreated]
FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent1]
    OUTER APPLY (
        SELECT TOP 1
            [Extent2].[ID], 
            [Extent2].[DocumentID],
            [Extent2].[Status], 
            [Extent2].[DateCreated]
        FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent2]
        WHERE [Extent1].[DocumentID] = [Extent2].[DocumentID]
        ORDER BY [Extent2].[DateCreated] DESC, [Extent2].[ID] DESC
    ) AS [Project2]
WHERE ([Project2].[ID] IS NULL OR [Project2].[ID] = [Extent1].[ID])

Option 2:

SELECT 
    [Limit1].[DocumentID] AS [ID], 
    [Limit1].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], 
    [Limit1].[Status] AS [Status], 
    [Limit1].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
FROM (
    SELECT DISTINCT [Extent1].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID] FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent1]
) AS [Distinct1]
    OUTER APPLY  (
        SELECT TOP (1) [Project2].[ID] AS [ID], [Project2].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], [Project2].[Status] AS [Status], [Project2].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
        FROM (
            SELECT 
                [Extent2].[ID] AS [ID], 
                [Extent2].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], 
                [Extent2].[Status] AS [Status], 
                [Extent2].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
            FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent2]
            WHERE [Distinct1].[DocumentID] = [Extent2].[DocumentID]
        )  AS [Project2]
        ORDER BY [Project2].[ID] DESC
    ) AS [Limit1]

M$'s Management Studio: After highlighting and running the first block, highlight both Option 1 and Option 2, Right click -> [Display Estimated Execution Plan]. Then run the entire thing to see the results.

Option 1 Results:

ID  DocumentID  Status  DateCreated
6   1   S1  8/2/11 3:00
5   2   S3  8/1/11 6:00
6   3   S1  8/2/11 7:00

Option 2 Results:

ID  DocumentID  Status  DateCreated
6   1   S1  8/2/11 3:00
5   2   S3  8/1/11 6:00
6   3   S1  8/2/11 7:00

Note:

I tend to use APPLY when I want a join to be 1-to-(1 of many).

I use a JOIN if I want the join to be 1-to-many, or many-to-many.

I avoid CTE with ROW_NUMBER() unless I need to do something advanced and am ok with the windowing performance penalty.

I also avoid EXISTS / IN subqueries in the WHERE or ON clause, as I have experienced this causing some terrible execution plans. But mileage varies. Review the execution plan and profile performance where and when needed!

SELECT o.*
FROM `DocumentStatusLogs` o                   
  LEFT JOIN `DocumentStatusLogs` b                   
  ON o.DocumentID = b.DocumentID AND o.DateCreated < b.DateCreated
 WHERE b.DocumentID is NULL ;

If you want to return only recent document order by DateCreated, it will return only top 1 document by DocumentID

I've done some timings over the various recommendations here, and the results really depend on the size of the table involved, but the most consistent solution is using the CROSS APPLY These tests were run against SQL Server 2008-R2, using a table with 6,500 records, and another (identical schema) with 137 million records. The columns being queried are part of the primary key on the table, and the table width is very small (about 30 bytes). The times are reported by SQL Server from the actual execution plan.

Query                                  Time for 6500 (ms)    Time for 137M(ms)

CROSS APPLY                                    17.9                17.9
SELECT WHERE col = (SELECT MAX(COL)…)           6.6               854.4
DENSE_RANK() OVER PARTITION                     6.6               907.1

I think the really amazing thing was how consistent the time was for the CROSS APPLY regardless of the number of rows involved.

SELECT documentid, 
       status, 
       datecreated 
FROM   documentstatuslogs dlogs 
WHERE  status = (SELECT status 
                 FROM   documentstatuslogs 
                 WHERE  documentid = dlogs.documentid 
                 ORDER  BY datecreated DESC 
                 LIMIT  1) 

In scenarios where you want to avoid using row_count(), you can also use a left join:

select ds.DocumentID, ds.Status, ds.DateCreated 
from DocumentStatusLogs ds
left join DocumentStatusLogs filter 
    ON ds.DocumentID = filter.DocumentID
    -- Match any row that has another row that was created after it.
    AND ds.DateCreated < filter.DateCreated
-- then filter out any rows that matched 
where filter.DocumentID is null 

For the example schema, you could also use a "not in subquery", which generally compiles to the same output as the left join:

select ds.DocumentID, ds.Status, ds.DateCreated 
from DocumentStatusLogs ds
WHERE ds.ID NOT IN (
    SELECT filter.ID 
    FROM DocumentStatusLogs filter
    WHERE ds.DocumentID = filter.DocumentID
        AND ds.DateCreated < filter.DateCreated)

Note, the subquery pattern wouldn't work if the table didn't have at least one single-column unique key/constraint/index, in this case the primary key "Id".

Both of these queries tend to be more "expensive" than the row_count() query (as measured by Query Analyzer). However, you might encounter scenarios where they return results faster or enable other optimizations.

This is quite an old thread, but I thought I'd throw my two cents in just the same as the accepted answer didn't work particularly well for me. I tried gbn's solution on a large dataset and found it to be terribly slow (>45 seconds on 5 million plus records in SQL Server 2012). Looking at the execution plan it's obvious that the issue is that it requires a SORT operation which slows things down significantly.

Here's an alternative that I lifted from the entity framework that needs no SORT operation and does a NON-Clustered Index search. This reduces the execution time down to < 2 seconds on the aforementioned record set.

SELECT 
[Limit1].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], 
[Limit1].[Status] AS [Status], 
[Limit1].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
FROM   (SELECT DISTINCT [Extent1].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID] FROM [dbo].[DocumentStatusLogs] AS [Extent1]) AS [Distinct1]
OUTER APPLY  (SELECT TOP (1) [Project2].[ID] AS [ID], [Project2].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], [Project2].[Status] AS [Status], [Project2].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
    FROM (SELECT 
        [Extent2].[ID] AS [ID], 
        [Extent2].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], 
        [Extent2].[Status] AS [Status], 
        [Extent2].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
        FROM [dbo].[DocumentStatusLogs] AS [Extent2]
        WHERE ([Distinct1].[DocumentID] = [Extent2].[DocumentID])
    )  AS [Project2]
    ORDER BY [Project2].[ID] DESC) AS [Limit1]

Now I'm assuming something that isn't entirely specified in the original question, but if your table design is such that your ID column is an auto-increment ID, and the DateCreated is set to the current date with each insert, then even without running with my query above you could actually get a sizable performance boost to gbn's solution (about half the execution time) just from ordering on ID instead of ordering on DateCreated as this will provide an identical sort order and it's a faster sort.

I know this is an old thread but the TOP 1 WITH TIES solutions is quite nice and might be helpful to some reading through the solutions.

select top 1 with ties
   DocumentID
  ,Status
  ,DateCreated
from DocumentStatusLogs
order by row_number() over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated desc)

More about the TOP clause can be found here.

SELECT * FROM
DocumentStatusLogs JOIN (
  SELECT DocumentID, MAX(DateCreated) DateCreated
  FROM DocumentStatusLogs
  GROUP BY DocumentID
  ) max_date USING (DocumentID, DateCreated)

What database server? This code doesn't work on all of them.

Regarding the second half of your question, it seems reasonable to me to include the status as a column. You can leave DocumentStatusLogs as a log, but still store the latest info in the main table.

BTW, if you already have the DateCreated column in the Documents table you can just join DocumentStatusLogs using that (as long as DateCreated is unique in DocumentStatusLogs).

Edit: MsSQL does not support USING, so change it to:

ON DocumentStatusLogs.DocumentID = max_date.DocumentID AND DocumentStatusLogs.DateCreated = max_date.DateCreated

My code to select top 1 from each group

select a.* from #DocumentStatusLogs a where 
 datecreated in( select top 1 datecreated from #DocumentStatusLogs b
where 
a.documentid = b.documentid
order by datecreated desc
)

Try this:

SELECT [DocumentID]
    ,[tmpRez].value('/x[2]', 'varchar(20)') AS [Status]
    ,[tmpRez].value('/x[3]', 'datetime') AS [DateCreated]
FROM (
    SELECT [DocumentID]
        ,cast('<x>' + max(cast([ID] AS VARCHAR(10)) + '</x><x>' + [Status] + '</x><x>' + cast([DateCreated] AS VARCHAR(20))) + '</x>' AS XML) AS [tmpRez]
    FROM DocumentStatusLogs
    GROUP BY DocumentID
    ) AS [tmpQry]

It is checked in SQLite that you can use the following simple query with GROUP BY

SELECT MAX(DateCreated), *
FROM DocumentStatusLogs
GROUP BY DocumentID

Here MAX help to get the maximum DateCreated FROM each group.

But it seems that MYSQL doesn't associate *-columns with the value of max DateCreated :(

I believe this can be done just like this. This might need some tweaking but you can just select the max from the group.

These answers are overkill..

SELECT
  d.DocumentID,
  MAX(d.Status),
  MAX(d1.DateCreated)
FROM DocumentStatusLogs d, DocumentStatusLogs d1
USING(DocumentID)
GROUP BY d.DocumentID
ORDER BY DateCreated DESC

I just learned how to use cross apply. Here's how to use it in this scenario:

 select d.DocumentID, ds.Status, ds.DateCreated 
 from Documents as d 
 cross apply 
     (select top 1 Status, DateCreated
      from DocumentStatusLogs 
      where DocumentID = d.DocumentId
      order by DateCreated desc) as ds

CROSS APPLY was the method I used for my solution, as it worked for me, and for my clients needs. And from what I've read, should provide the best overall performance should their database grow substantially.

This is the most vanilla TSQL I can come up with

    SELECT * FROM DocumentStatusLogs D1 JOIN
    (
      SELECT
        DocumentID,MAX(DateCreated) AS MaxDate
      FROM
        DocumentStatusLogs
      GROUP BY
        DocumentID
    ) D2
    ON
      D2.DocumentID=D1.DocumentID
    AND
      D2.MaxDate=D1.DateCreated

If you're worried about performance, you can also do this with MAX():

SELECT *
FROM DocumentStatusLogs D
WHERE DateCreated = (SELECT MAX(DateCreated) FROM DocumentStatusLogs WHERE ID = D.ID)

ROW_NUMBER() requires a sort of all the rows in your SELECT statement, whereas MAX does not. Should drastically speed up your query.

This solution can be used to get the TOP N most recent rows for each partition (in the example, N is 1 in the WHERE statement and partition is doc_id):

SELECT T.doc_id, T.status, T.date_created FROM 
(
    SELECT a.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY doc_id ORDER BY date_created DESC) AS rnk FROM doc a
) T
WHERE T.rnk = 1;

Here are 3 separate approaches to the problem in hand along with the best choices of indexing for each of those queries (please try out the indexes yourselves and see the logical read, elapsed time, execution plan. I have provided the suggestions from my experience on such queries without executing for this specific problem).

Approach 1: Using ROW_NUMBER(). If rowstore index is not being able to enhance the performance, you can try out nonclustered/clustered columnstore index as for queries with aggregation and grouping and for tables which are ordered by in different columns all the times, columnstore index usually is the best choice.

;WITH CTE AS
    (
       SELECT   *,
                RN = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
       FROM     DocumentStatusLogs
    )
    SELECT  ID      
        ,DocumentID 
        ,Status     
        ,DateCreated
    FROM    CTE
    WHERE   RN = 1;

Approach 2: Using FIRST_VALUE. If rowstore index is not being able to enhance the performance, you can try out nonclustered/clustered columnstore index as for queries with aggregation and grouping and for tables which are ordered by in different columns all the times, columnstore index usually is the best choice.

SELECT  DISTINCT
    ID      = FIRST_VALUE(ID) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
    ,DocumentID
    ,Status     = FIRST_VALUE(Status) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
    ,DateCreated    = FIRST_VALUE(DateCreated) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
FROM    DocumentStatusLogs;

Approach 3: Using CROSS APPLY. Creating rowstore index on DocumentStatusLogs table covering the columns used in the query should be enough to cover the query without need of a columnstore index.

SELECT  DISTINCT
    ID      = CA.ID
    ,DocumentID = D.DocumentID
    ,Status     = CA.Status 
    ,DateCreated    = CA.DateCreated
FROM    DocumentStatusLogs D
    CROSS APPLY (
            SELECT  TOP 1 I.*
            FROM    DocumentStatusLogs I
            WHERE   I.DocumentID = D.DocumentID
            ORDER   BY I.DateCreated DESC
            ) CA;