I have a table that has a ton of rows (>10K). Most of the rows have duplicate role values associated with the username.
What I am tryi
The max query didn't work because you included request_id in the grouping - try:
max
request_id
select distinct uname, role, max(request_id) as request_id from das_table where uname='jsmith' group by uname, role
SQLFiddle here.