Question

In a database of mine there is a table called ‘Budget’ defined as follows

 CREATE TABLE BUDGET (
  ID INTEGER NOT NULL,
  THERAPIST INTEGER,
  CURDATE DATE,
  ILLNESS SMALLINT,
  HOLIDAY SMALLINT);

  ALTER TABLE BUDGET ADD PRIMARY KEY (ID);

The purpose of the table is to store how many hours a month a therapist is entitled to sick leave and regular holiday.

The table has the following values

ID: 1, THERAPIST: 36, CURDATE: 01/01/2012, ILLNESS:8, HOLIDAY: 8
ID: 2, THERAPIST: 36, CURDATE: 01/07/2012, ILLNESS:8, HOLIDAY: 10
ID: 3, THERAPIST: 74, CURDATE: 01/01/2012, ILLNESS:8, HOLIDAY: 8
ID: 4, THERAPIST: 74, CURDATE: 01/03/2012, ILLNESS:8, HOLIDAY: 10

I want to write a query which returns one row per therapist, with the most recent data (the above data shows that therapist 36 was entitled to 8 hours holiday per month in the months 1-6/2012, and from 7/2012 she is entitled to 10 hours per month). In other words, if I issue the query for the date 31/01/2012, I expect to get back rows 1 and 3; if I issue the query for the date 31/05/2012, I expect to get back rows 1 and 4 and if I issue the query for the date 31/08/2012, I expect to get back rows 2 and 4.

The following query gives me one row per therapist, but it gives me the maximum values of illness and holiday, which is not necessarily what I want.

select therapist, max (illness), max (holiday)  
from budget
where curdate <= '2012-08-31'
group by therapist

Should there be a fifth row in the table

ID: 5, THERAPIST: 74, CURDATE: 01/07/2012, ILLNESS: 6, HOLIDAY: 6

querying on 31/08/12 would return illness=8 and holiday=10, even though they should both be 6.

I tried the following query but this returns only one row

select therapist, illness, holiday
from budget
where curdate =
(select max (curdate) from budget b
 where b.therapist = budget.therapist
 and b.curdate <= '2012-08-31')

There are similar questions on SO, but none of them seem applicable to my situation. Of course, life would be easier if I could use ‘group by’ without an aggregate function but Firebird (and most DBMS) doesn’t support this.

Answer 1

If I understood your problem correctly, I think you want:

select
    b.*
from
    budget b
    join (
        select
            therapist,
            max(curdate) as maxdate
        from
            budget
        where 
            curdate <= '2012-08-31'
        group by
            therapist
    ) grouped on grouped.therapist = b.therapist and grouped.maxdate = b.curdate