retrieve the most recent record for each customer

Question

I have this data:

ID   NAME   DATE
3    JOHN   2011-08-08
2    YOKO   2010-07-07
1    JOHN   2009-06-06

Code (for SQL Server 2005):

Answer 1

SELECT 
FROM SourceTable st
INNER JOIN (SELECT name, MAX(Datefield) as Datefield
            FROM SourceTable
            GROUP BY name) x
    ON x.Name = st.name
    AND x.datefield = st.datefield