Question

Referring to the diagram below the records table has unique Records. Each record is updated, via comments through an Update Table. When I join the two I get lots of duplicates.

1. How to remove duplicates? Group By does not work for me as I have more than 10 fields in select query and some of them are functions.

2. Write a sub query which pulls the last updates in the Update table for each record that is updated in a particular month. Joining with this sub query will solve my problem.

Thanks!

Edit
Table structure that is of interest is

create table Records(
recordID int,
90more_fields various
)

create table Updates(
update_id int,
record_id int,
comment text,
byUser varchar(25),
datecreate datetime
)

Answer 1

Here’s one way.

SELECT * /*But list columns explicitly*/
FROM   Orange o
       CROSS APPLY (SELECT TOP 1 *
                    FROM   Blue b
                    WHERE  b.datecreate >= '20110901'
                           AND b.datecreate < '20111001'
                           AND o.RecordID = b.Record_ID2
                    ORDER  BY b.datecreate  DESC) b