Selecting row with highest ID based on another column - sql

Question

In SQL Server 2008 R2, suppose I have a table layout like this...
+----------+---------+-------------+
| UniqueID | GroupID | Title |
+----------+---------+-------------+
| 1 | 1 | TEST 1 |
| 2 | 1 | TEST 2 |
| 3 | 3 | TEST 3 |
| 4 | 3 | TEST 4 |
| 5 | 5 | TEST 5 |
| 6 | 6 | TEST 6 |
| 7 | 6 | TEST 7 |
| 8 | 6 | TEST 8 |
+----------+---------+-------------+
Is it possible to select every row with the highest UniqueID number, for each GroupID. So according to the table above - if I ran the query, I would expect this...
+----------+---------+-------------+
| UniqueID | GroupID | Title |
+----------+---------+-------------+
| 2 | 1 | TEST 2 |
| 4 | 3 | TEST 4 |
| 5 | 5 | TEST 5 |
| 8 | 6 | TEST 8 |
+----------+---------+-------------+
Been chomping on this for a while, but can't seem to crack it.
Many thanks,

Answer 1

SELECT *
FROM (SELECT uniqueid, groupid, title,
Row_number()
OVER ( partition BY groupid ORDER BY uniqueid DESC) AS rn
FROM table) a
WHERE a.rn = 1

Answer 2

With SQL-Server as rdbms you can use a ranking function like ROW_NUMBER:
WITH CTE AS
(
SELECT UniqueID, GroupID, Title,
RN = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITON BY GroupID
ORDER BY UniqueID DESC)
FROM dbo.TableName
)
SELECT UniqueID, GroupID, Title
FROM CTE
WHERE RN = 1
This returns exactly one record for each GroupID even if there are multiple rows with the highest UniqueID (the name does not suggest so). If you want to return all rows in then use DENSE_RANK instead of ROW_NUMBER.
Here you can see all functions and how they work: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189798.aspx

Answer 3

Since you have not mentioned any RDBMS, this statement below will work on almost all RDBMS. The purpose of the subquery is to get the greatest uniqueID for every GROUPID. To be able to get the other columns, the result of the subquery is joined on the original table.
SELECT a.*
FROM tableName a
INNER JOIN
(
SELECT GroupID, MAX(uniqueID) uniqueID
FROM tableName
GROUP By GroupID
) b ON a.GroupID = b.GroupID
AND a.uniqueID = b.uniqueID
In the case that your RDBMS supports Qnalytic functions, you can use ROW_NUMBER()
SELECT uniqueid, groupid, title
FROM
(
SELECT uniqueid, groupid, title,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY groupid
ORDER BY uniqueid DESC) rn
FROM tableName
) x
WHERE x.rn = 1
TSQL Ranking Functions
The ROW_NUMBER() generates sequential number which you can filter out. In this case the sequential number is generated on groupid and sorted by uniqueid in descending order. The greatest uniqueid will have a value of 1 in rn.

Answer 4

SELECT *
FROM the_table tt
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT *
FROM the_table nx
WHERE nx.GroupID = tt.GroupID
AND nx.UniqueID > tt.UniqueID
)
;
Should work in any DBMS (no window functions or CTEs are needed)
is probably faster than a sub query with an aggregate

Answer 5

Keeping it simple:
select * from test2
where UniqueID in (select max(UniqueID) from test2 group by GroupID)
Considering:
create table test2
(
UniqueID numeric,
GroupID numeric,
Title varchar(100)
)
insert into test2 values(1,1,'TEST 1')
insert into test2 values(2,1,'TEST 2')
insert into test2 values(3,3,'TEST 3')
insert into test2 values(4,3,'TEST 4')
insert into test2 values(5,5,'TEST 5')
insert into test2 values(6,6,'TEST 6')
insert into test2 values(7,6,'TEST 7')
insert into test2 values(8,6,'TEST 8')