Multiple max values in a query

Question

I know the title does not sound very descriptive, but it is the best I could think of:

I have this table

ID     BDATE      VALUE
28911  14/4/2009  44820
2         


        

Answer 1

you can use the MAX...KEEP(DENSE_RANK FIRST...) construct:

SQL> SELECT ID,
  2         MAX(bdate) bdate,
  3         MAX(VALUE) KEEP(DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY bdate DESC) VALUE 
  4   FROM DATA
  5  GROUP BY ID;

        ID BDATE            VALUE
---------- ----------- ----------
     28911 24/04/2009  7749594,67
     38537 22/04/2009    81098692
     38605 23/04/2009     6936575

This will be as efficient as the analytics method suggested by Majkel (no self-join, a single pass on the data)