Access SQL Query: Comparing Date In Select Statement - sql

Question

I have a problem that I simply cannot seem to figure out. I have a list of employees with different travel dates and I want to display all of them in a cascading list format. The problem is that I only want to see employees once, and only the date closest to today.
For example I could have 'Smith' in there multiple times with dates before and after today, as we also keep historical records. This means I can't just do min, as it will try and display a date before today, and max is too far forward.
The code example below ALMOST works. The problem is in the select statement. I want to show the minimum date after today, but instead it gives me 0's and -1's where the dates should be. There might just be another way to do this all together, but this is the only configuration that seems to allow the other information such as Site, Position, and Comments to be displayed correctly alongside it.
SELECT A.`Last Name` AS [Last Name], Min(A.`Date In`) > Now() AS [Date In], Max(B.Site) AS Site, Max(B.Position), Max(B.Comments) AS Comments
FROM Deployments AS A
INNER JOIN Deployments AS B ON A.ID = B.ID
GROUP BY A.`FSR Name`
HAVING (((Max(A.`Actual TEP IN`))>Now()));
I did a group by Name because I only want to see each individual once. If I don't add the table to itself with a join it gives a self reference error. This is my first time posting so I hope this makes sense! All help will be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Not sure what DB you're on, but in general, you need to return MIN(date) instead of the result of the comparison "Min(Date) > Now()" - I'm guessing this is where you're seeing 0's and -1's, since that would be the result of the comparison, when you want the minimum date value itself.
Also, if you are just wanting people who have a trip date in the future, just restrict your query with a WHERE clause, do a GROUP BY, and you get rid of the self-join. Also note that the example below aligns some discrepancies in your OP like where you're selecting based on "Last Name" but grouping on "FSR Name" - these things must be consistent, whichever field you're concerned about.
Example:
SELECT A.[FSR Name] AS [FSR Name],
Min(A.[Date In]) AS [Date In],
Max(A.Site) AS Site,
Max(A.Position) AS Position,
Max(A.Comments) AS Comments
FROM Deployments AS A
WHERE A.[Date In] > Now()
GROUP BY A.[FSR Name];
EDIT: If you need to make sure that Site,Position,Comments all came from the same row, you have to do something like one of these options:
If you have a Primary Key:
select * from Deployments A3 where A3.pk_value =
(select max(A2.pk_value) from Deployments A2
where A2.[Date In] =
(select Max([Date In]) from Deployments A where A.[FSR Name] = A2.[FSR Name])
and A2.[FSR Name] = A3.[FSR Name]
)
This guarantees you to get 1 row per FSR Name, even if there are multiple rows for that FSR with the same "latest" date.
Otherwise, you can leave out the secondary query dealing with the pk_value, but you run a risk of getting multiple rows for an FSR that has multiple records with the same "latest" date.
Note: when you get to queries this complex, running on a full-featured database (SQL Server, Oracle, anything but Access) allows you to use much more sophistication. For this example, "Windowing Functions" would give you the answer without as much wrangling. Not sure if you're stuck with Access for now, but consider this for the future, anyway.

Answer 2

Try something like this
Select A.LastName, A.DateIn, A.Site, A.Position, A.Comments
From deployments a
Where not exists (Select *
From deployments b
Where b.id <> a.id
and (abs(datediff(d, getdate(), a.datein))) > abs(datediff(d, getdate(), b.datein))
or abs(datediff(d, getdate(), a.datein)) = abs(datediff(d, getdate(), b.datein) and a.id > b.id))
Instead of the funny mins and maxes that you are using to try to get the row with the datein that is closest to today, try using datediff. With this function, you can specify what type of date or time value you are looking to compare (day, month, year, minute) and then find the difference between two different datetimes. In this case, I used getdate() to find the current date and time. Then, we want the datein with the least value for datediff, the datein that is closest to today. Datediff will return positive or negative values, so I used abs to get the absolute value of the result. I did this because it doesn't matter if the date is before today or after today.
Then we are looking in the deployment table. The subquery says that we should look at all the values which are not the current value. Then, find all the rows that have a smaller datediff than the current record. Also, find all the records that have the same datediff as the current record and a smaller id. We will only include the current record if there isn't anything that fits this criteria. It is a little weird to think about, but this type of query should help you find what you are looking for a lot easier. The only thing is that you will need to add criteria in the where clause of the subquery to determine which entries to compare. As it stands, this query will look at all of the entries in your deployments table and pull back the one row that has a datein closest to today. Since you want one row for each person, this will need few more specifications.