Grouping by Column with Dependence on another Column

Question

Here is a simplified look at the problem I am trying to cleanly solve via a MySQL query. This is not the actual table I am dealing with.

If I have the following ta

Answer 1

Another alternative is to load the data sorted in a subquery, then group on the results. I can't cite this, but I've read in a few places there's no (discernable) performance hit on this.

So something like:

SELECT * 
FROM (
    SELECT * 
    FROM `yourtable` 
    ORDER BY `id` DESC
) as `tmp` 
GROUP BY `name`

Answer 2

Try this one, the idea behind the subquery is that it gets the latest ID for each Name using MAX (aggregate function). Then join it against the table itself on the two columns of the subquery.

SELECT  a.*
FROM    tableName a
        INNER JOIN 
        (
            SELECT name, MAX(ID) maxID
            FROM tableName
            GROUP BY name
        ) b ON a.Name = b.Name AND
                a.ID = b.MaxID

• SQLFiddle Demo