Question

I’m creating a joined view of two tables, but am getting unwanted duplicates from table2.
For example: table1 has 9000 records and I need the resulting view to contain exactly the same; table2 may have multiple records with the same FKID but I only want to return one record (random chosen is ok with my customer). I have the following code that works correctly, but performance is slower than desired (over 14 seconds).

SELECT     
    OBJECTID
    , PKID
    ,(SELECT TOP (1) SUBDIVISIO
        FROM dbo.table2 AS t2
        WHERE (t1.PKID = t2.FKID)) AS ProjectName
    ,(SELECT TOP (1) ASBUILT1
        FROM dbo.table2 AS t2
        WHERE (t1.PKID = t2.FKID)) AS Asbuilt
FROM dbo.table1 AS t1

Is there a way to do something similar with joins to speed up performance?
I’m using SQL Server 2008 R2.
I got close with the following code (~.5 seconds), but ‘Distinct’ only filters out records when all columns are duplicate (rather than just the FKID).

SELECT
    t1.OBJECTID
    ,t1.PKID
    ,t2.ProjectName
    ,t2.Asbuilt
FROM dbo.table1 AS t1
    LEFT JOIN (SELECT
        DISTINCT FKID
        ,ProjectName
        ,Asbuilt
        FROM dbo.table2) t2
    ON t1.PKID = t2.FKID

table examples

table1          table2

OID, PKID       FKID, ProjectName, Asbuilt
1, id1          id1, P1, AB1
2, id2          id1, P5, AB5
3, id4          id2, P10, AB2
5, id5          id5, P4, AB4

In the above example returned records should be id5/P4/AB4, id2/P10/AB2, and (id1/P1/AB1 OR id1/P5/AB5)

My search came up with similar questions, but none that resolved my problem. link, link
Thanks in advance for your help. This is my first post so let me know if I’ve broken any rules.

Answer 1

This will give the results you requested and should have the best performance.

SELECT     
    OBJECTID
    , PKID
    , t2.SUBDIVISIO,
    , t2.ASBUILT1

FROM        dbo.table1 AS t1
OUTER APPLY (
    SELECT  TOP 1 *
    FROM    dbo.table2 AS t2
    WHERE   t1.PKID = t2.FKID
    ) AS t2