Question

I have a table ‘books’. For simplicity, here are 3 columns:

name(text) | new(boolean) | press(text) 

I need to select publishing house(press), which has most new books.
I don’t understand why Access shows “Syntax error”.

SELECT press, COUNT(new) AS [Number of new books]
FROM books
WHERE new = TRUE
GROUP BY press
HAVING COUNT(new) = 
  SELECT MAX(s) 
  FROM 
  (   SELECT COUNT(new) AS s, press 
      FROM books
      WHERE new = TRUE
      GROUP BY press
  )

If I write only the second part:

  SELECT MAX(s) 
  FROM 
  (   SELECT COUNT(new) AS s, press 
      FROM books
      WHERE new = TRUE
      GROUP BY press
  )

It returns correct value (5)

If I write only 1st part with condition = 5, it’s good.

SELECT press, COUNT(new) AS [Number of new books]
FROM books
WHERE new = TRUE
GROUP BY press
HAVING COUNT(new) = 5

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The second query should be enclosed with parenthesis

SELECT press, COUNT(new) AS [Number of new books]
FROM books
WHERE new = TRUE
GROUP BY press
HAVING COUNT(new) = 
(
  SELECT MAX(s) 
  FROM 
  (   SELECT COUNT(new) AS s, press 
      FROM books
      WHERE new = TRUE
      GROUP BY press
  )
)