Question

Let’s say I have the following table:

category | guid
---------+-----------------------
   A     | 5BC2...
   A     | 6A1C...
   B     | 92A2...

Basically, I want to do the following SQL:

SELECT category, MIN(guid)
  FROM myTable
 GROUP BY category

It doesn’t necessarily have to be MIN. I just want to return one GUID of each category. I don’t care which one. Unfortunately, SQL Server does not allow MIN or MAX on GUIDs.

Of course, I could convert the guid into a varchar, or create some nested TOP 1 SQL, but that seems like an ugly workaround. Is there some elegant solution that I’ve missed?

Answer 1

Assuming you’re using SQL Server 2005 or later:

;with Numbered as (
     select category,guid,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY category ORDER BY guid) rn
     from myTable
)
select * from Numbered where rn=1