tsql: alternative to select subquery in join - sql

Question

this is my table layout simplified:
table1: pID (pkey), data
table2: rowID (pkey), pID (fkey), data, date
I want to select some rows from table1 joining one row from table2 per pID for the most recent date for that pID.
I currently do this with the following query:
SELECT * FROM table1 as a
LEFT JOIN table2 AS b ON b.rowID = (SELECT TOP(1) rowID FROM table2 WHERE pID = a.pID ORDER BY date DESC)
This way of working is slow, probabaly because it has to do a subquery on each row of table 1. Is there a way to improve performance on this or do it another way?

Answer 1

You can try something on these lines, use the subquery to get the latest based on the date field (grouping by the pID), then join that with the first table, this way the subquery would not have not have to be executed for each row of Table1 and will result in better performance:
Select *
FROM Table1 a
INNER JOIN
(
SELECT pID, Max(Date) FROM Table2
GROUP BY pID
) b
ON a.pID = b.pID
I have provided the sample SQL for one column using the group by, in case you need additional columns, add them to the GROUP BY clause. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

use the below code, and note that i added the order by Date desc to get the most resent data
select *
from table1 a
inner join table2 b on a.pID=b.pID
where b.rowID in(select top(1) from table2 t where t.pID=a.pID order by Date desc)

Answer 3

I am using the code below in a similar scenaro (I transcripted it to your example)
SELECT b.*
FROM table1 AS a
left outer join (
SELECT a.*
FROM table2 a
inner join (
SELECT a.pID, max(date) as date
FROM table2
WHERE date <= <max_date>
group by pID
) b ON a.pID = b.pID AND a.date = b.date
) b ON a.pID = b.pID
) b on a.pID = b.pID
The only problem with this aproach is that you have to make sure the date's don't reapet for the pID's

Answer 4

You can do this with the row_number() function and a subquery:
SELECT t1.*
FROM table1 t1 LEFT JOIN
(select t2.*, row_number() over (partition by pId order by rowId desc) as seqnum
from table2 t2
) t2
on t1.pId = t2.pId and t2.seqnum = 1;

Answer 5

Use the ROW_NUMBER() function to get a column saying which id of each row in table 2 is the first (As partitioned by the pID, and ordered by the rowDate descending)
Example:
WITH cte AS
(
SELECT
rowID AS t2RowId,
ROW_NUMBER OVER (PARTITION BY pID ORDER BY rowDate DESC) AS rowNum
FROM table2 t2
) -- gets the t2RowIds + a column which says which is the latest for each pID
SELECT t1.*, t2.*
FROM table1 t1
LEFT JOIN
(
table2 t2
JOIN cte ON t2.rowID = cte.t2RowId AND cte.rowNum = 1
) ON t1.pID = t2.pID
This is guaranteed to only return 1 item from table2 per pID, even if multiple items have the same date. You should of course ensure that the date column is indexed in table 2 for quick performance (ideally an index that also covers the PrimaryID of table2)