Question

In a previous question I asked, someone suggested the MAX(value) syntax to prioritize on alphbetization

How to use GROUP BY to retrieve a result set with priority on alphabeticization

However I’m dealing with the CASE statement and using MAX(CASE statement) is syntactically incorrect.

SELECT id, 
CASE
    WHEN filename LIKE '%.mp3' THEN 'song'
    ELSE 'other' END as type
FROM filenames

1   song
2   song
2   other
3   other
3   song

SELECT id, 
CASE
    WHEN filename LIKE '%.mp3' THEN 'song'
    ELSE 'other' END as type
FROM filenames
GROUP BY id;

1   song
2   song
3   other

How would I prioritize the type field for those which come alphabetically last? Ex. the result set should be

1   song
2   song
3   song

I’d like to avoid nested statements if possible. Can this be done with the MAX(type) syntax?

Answer 1

You can use following

SELECT id, 
CASE
    WHEN filename LIKE '%.mp3' THEN 'song'
    ELSE 'other' END as type
FROM filenames
GROUP BY id DESC;

DESC will give you descending order