CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sqlsqlitewhere-clauseaggregate-functions
Kyle Cronin
Kyle Cronin

Reputation: 79113

Aggregate functions in WHERE clause in SQLite

Simply put, I have a table with, among other things, a column for timestamps. I want to get the row with the most recent (i.e. greatest value) timestamp. Currently I'm doing this:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 1

But I'd much rather do something like this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE timestamp=max(timestamp)

However, SQLite rejects this query:

SQL error: misuse of aggregate function max()

The documentation confirms this behavior (bottom of page):

Aggregate functions may only be used in a SELECT statement.

My question is: is it possible to write a query to get the row with the greatest timestamp without ordering the select and limiting the number of returned rows to 1? This seems like it should be possible, but I guess my SQL-fu isn't up to snuff.

Upvotes: 14

Views: 42342

Answers (4)

ABH
ABH

Reputation: 3439

I guess what SquareCog had suggested was the best thing to do

SELECT * FROM table WHERE timestamp = (select max(timestamp) from table)

Upvotes: 1

ADP
ADP

Reputation: 61

There are many ways to skin a cat.

If you have an Identity Column that has an auto-increment functionality, a faster query would result if you return the last record by ID, due to the indexing of the column, unless of course you wish to put an index on the timestamp column.

SELECT * FROM TABLE ORDER BY ID DESC LIMIT 1

Upvotes: 4

Tom H
Tom H

Reputation: 47462

I think I've answered this question 5 times in the past week now, but I'm too tired to find a link to one of those right now, so here it is again...

SELECT
     *
FROM
     table T1
LEFT OUTER JOIN table T2 ON
     T2.timestamp > T1.timestamp
WHERE
     T2.timestamp IS NULL

You're basically looking for the row where no other row matches that is later than it.

NOTE: As pointed out in the comments, this method will not perform as well in this kind of situation. It will usually work better (for SQL Server at least) in situations where you want the last row for each customer (as an example).

Upvotes: 1

SquareCog
SquareCog

Reputation: 19666

SELECT * from foo where timestamp = (select max(timestamp) from foo)

or, if SQLite insists on treating subselects as sets, 

SELECT * from foo where timestamp in (select max(timestamp) from foo)

Upvotes: 18

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