Question

Suppose I have the following MySQL table:

user_id    date_of_application   date_ended    grade    status    
---------------------------------------------------------------

 1            2011-01-01         2011-02-28     1.0     Ended
 1            2011-02-02         2011-03-28     1.0     Ended
 1            2011-03-03         2011-04-28     (1.5)   Ended

 2            2011-01-01         2011-02-20     2.0     Ended
 2            2011-02-02         2011-03-11     2.5     Ended
 2            2011-03-03         2011-04-28     (1.0)   Ended

 1            2011-05-10              -          -      Pending
 2            2011-05-15              -          -      Pending

• note that the table can contain multiple records of the same user as long as all its previous applications have ended (status = ended)
• user_id is not unique
• date is in yy-mm-dd format
• date_ended and grade are only updated the instant the application has ended

What I want to accomplish here is to retrieve all rows (together will all columns) WHERE status is ‘Pending’ and such that the value for the grade column for each of these retrieved rows is the value of the latest grade (in parenthesis above) where status is ‘Ended’ for this particular user (or row).

The result:

user_id    date_of_application   date_ended    grade    status    
---------------------------------------------------------------

 1            2011-05-10         2011-06-10     1.5      Pending
 2            2011-05-15         2011-06-15     1.0      Pending

—-EDIT—–:

I’m not sure if I need to create another thread for these additions (‘ will do if I’m advised to do so), anyhow — I decided to go with ypercube’s answer (see below) (which works, minus the commented part). However, in addition to the above resulting table, I also would like to select two more columns (each from a different table):

Working code that gives-off the desired table result (see above):

SELECT user_id
     , date_of_application
     , date_ended
     , ( SELECT te.grade
         FROM TableX AS te
         WHERE te.status = 'Ended'
           AND te.user_id = t.user_id    

         ORDER BY te.date_ended DESC
         LIMIT 1
       ) AS grade
     , status
FROM TableX AS t
WHERE status = 'Pending'

Now I need to select these two other columns (is_first_time_user and name) together with the result table previously mentioned. Note that user_id for both of these tables are unique:

Table2:

user_id    is_firs_time_user
-----------------------------

 1               no
 2               no

Table3:

user_id    name  
----------------------

 1        User A
 2        User B

Answer 1

SELECT user_d
     , date_of_application
     , date_ended
     , ( SELECT te.grade
         FROM TableX AS te
         WHERE te.status = 'Ended'
           AND te.user_id = t.user_id
           AND te.date_ended < t.date_of_application      --- not sure if 
                                                          --- this is needed
         ORDER BY te.date_ended DESC
         LIMIT 1
       ) AS grade
     , status
FROM TableX AS t
WHERE status = 'Pending'