Question

I’m trying to build a query that will sort by Name and Year, filter duplicates with higher years and return those records in a table. My data currently looks like this:

ID-----Name-----Year
1      Bob      2010
2      John     2014
3      Bob      2004
4      Eric     2005

The data should be primarily sorted by Name then secondarily sorted by Year in a descending fashion, like so:

ID-----Name-----Year
3      Bob      2004
1      Bob      2010
4      Eric     2005
2      John     2014

Then duplicate Name records should be filter returning only the lowest Year like so:

ID-----Name-----Year
3      Bob      2004
4      Eric     2005
2      John     2014

I’ve tried things like SELECT DISTINCT and HAVING COUNT but I can’t seem to get it. Probably missing something simple. Any help?

Answer 1

select ID, Name, Year
from (
    select ID, Name, Year, Rank() over (partition by Name order by year) as Rank
    from MyTable
) t
where Rank = 1

SQL FIddle Example #1

If you can’t use PARTITION, you can do this:

select m.ID, m.Name, m.Year
from (
    select Name, min(Year) as MinYear
    from MyTable
    group by Name
) mm
inner join MyTable m on mm.Name = m.Name and mm.MinYear = m.Year

SQL Fiddle Example #2