GROUP BY having MAX date

Solution 1:

Putting the subquery in the WHERE clause and restricting it to n.control_number means it runs the subquery many times. This is called a correlated subquery, and it's often a performance killer.

It's better to run the subquery once, in the FROM clause, to get the max date per control number.

SELECT n.* 
FROM tblpm n 
INNER JOIN (
  SELECT control_number, MAX(date_updated) AS date_updated
  FROM tblpm GROUP BY control_number
) AS max USING (control_number, date_updated);

Solution 2:

There's no need to group in that subquery... a where clause would suffice:

SELECT * FROM tblpm n
WHERE date_updated=(SELECT MAX(date_updated)
    FROM tblpm WHERE control_number=n.control_number)

Also, do you have an index on the 'date_updated' column? That would certainly help.