Simple Query to Grab Max Value for each ID
Solution 1:
Something like this? Join your table with itself, and exclude the rows for which a higher signal was found.
select cur.id, cur.signal, cur.station, cur.ownerid
from yourtable cur
where not exists (
select *
from yourtable high
where high.id = cur.id
and high.signal > cur.signal
)
This would list one row for each highest signal, so there might be multiple rows per id.
Solution 2:
You are doing a group-wise maximum/minimum operation. This is a common trap: it feels like something that should be easy to do, but in SQL it aggravatingly isn't.
There are a number of approaches (both standard ANSI and vendor-specific) to this problem, most of which are sub-optimal in many situations. Some will give you multiple rows when more than one row shares the same maximum/minimum value; some won't. Some work well on tables with a small number of groups; others are more efficient for a larger number of groups with smaller rows per group.
Here's a discussion of some of the common ones (MySQL-biased but generally applicable). Personally, if I know there are no multiple maxima (or don't care about getting them) I often tend towards the null-left-self-join method, which I'll post as no-one else has yet:
SELECT reading.ID, reading.Signal, reading.Station, reading.OwnerID
FROM readings AS reading
LEFT JOIN readings AS highersignal
ON highersignal.ID=reading.ID AND highersignal.Signal>reading.Signal
WHERE highersignal.ID IS NULL;
Solution 3:
In classic SQL-92 (not using the OLAP operations used by Quassnoi), then you can use:
SELECT g.ID, g.MaxSignal, t.Station, t.OwnerID
FROM (SELECT id, MAX(Signal) AS MaxSignal
FROM t
GROUP BY id) AS g
JOIN t ON g.id = t.id AND g.MaxSignal = t.Signal;
(Unchecked syntax; assumes your table is 't'.)
The sub-query in the FROM clause identifies the maximum signal value for each id; the join combines that with the corresponding data row from the main table.
NB: if there are several entries for a specific ID that all have the same signal strength and that strength is the MAX(), then you will get several output rows for that ID.
Tested against IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11.50.FC3 running on Solaris 10:
+ CREATE TEMP TABLE signal_info
(
id INTEGER NOT NULL,
signal INTEGER NOT NULL,
station CHAR(5) NOT NULL,
ownerid INTEGER NOT NULL
);
+ INSERT INTO signal_info VALUES(111, -120, 'Home', 1);
+ INSERT INTO signal_info VALUES(111, -130, 'Car' , 1);
+ INSERT INTO signal_info VALUES(111, -135, 'Work', 2);
+ INSERT INTO signal_info VALUES(222, -98 , 'Home', 2);
+ INSERT INTO signal_info VALUES(222, -95 , 'Work', 1);
+ INSERT INTO signal_info VALUES(222, -103, 'Work', 2);
+ SELECT g.ID, g.MaxSignal, t.Station, t.OwnerID
FROM (SELECT id, MAX(Signal) AS MaxSignal
FROM signal_info
GROUP BY id) AS g
JOIN signal_info AS t ON g.id = t.id AND g.MaxSignal = t.Signal;
111 -120 Home 1
222 -95 Work 1
I named the table Signal_Info for this test - but it seems to produce the right answer. This only shows that there is at least one DBMS that supports the notation. However, I am a little surprised that MS SQL Server does not - which version are you using?
It never ceases to surprise me how often SQL questions are submitted without table names.
Solution 4:
WITH q AS
(
SELECT c.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY id ORDER BY signal DESC) rn
FROM mytable
)
SELECT *
FROM q
WHERE rn = 1
This will return one row even if there are duplicates of MAX(signal) for a given ID.
Having an index on (id, signal) will greatly improve this query.
Solution 5:
with tab(id, sig, sta, oid) as
(
select 111 as id, -120 as signal, 'Home' as station, 1 as ownerId union all
select 111, -130, 'Car', 1 union all
select 111, -135, 'Work', 2 union all
select 222, -98, 'Home', 2 union all
select 222, -95, 'Work', 1 union all
select 222, -103, 'Work', 2
) ,
tabG(id, maxS) as
(
select id, max(sig) as sig from tab group by id
)
select g.*, p.* from tabG g
cross apply ( select top(1) * from tab t where t.id=g.id order by t.sig desc ) p