Retrieving the last record in each group - MySQL

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

There is a table messages that contains data as shown below:

Id   Name   Other_Columns
-------------------------
1    A       A_data_1
2    A       A_data_2
3    A       A_data_3
4    B       B_data_1
5    B       B_data_2
6    C       C_data_1

If I run a query select * from messages group by name, I will get the result as:

1    A       A_data_1
4    B       B_data_1
6    C       C_data_1

What query will return the following result?

3    A       A_data_3
5    B       B_data_2
6    C       C_data_1

That is, the last record in each group should be returned.

At present, this is the query that I use:

SELECT
  *
FROM (SELECT
  *
FROM messages
ORDER BY id DESC) AS x
GROUP BY name

But this looks highly inefficient. Any other ways to achieve the same result?

manpreet 2 years ago

CREATE TABLE `posts` (
  `PostId` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `PostTypeId` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `AcceptedAnswerId` bigint(20) unsigned default NULL,
  `ParentId` bigint(20) unsigned default NULL,
  `CreationDate` datetime NOT NULL,
  `Score` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  `ViewCount` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  `Body` text NOT NULL,
  `OwnerUserId` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `OwnerDisplayName` varchar(40) default NULL,
  `LastEditorUserId` bigint(20) unsigned default NULL,
  `LastEditDate` datetime default NULL,
  `LastActivityDate` datetime default NULL,
  `Title` varchar(250) NOT NULL default '',
  `Tags` varchar(150) NOT NULL default '',
  `AnswerCount` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  `CommentCount` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  `FavoriteCount` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  `ClosedDate` datetime default NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`PostId`),
  UNIQUE KEY `PostId` (`PostId`),
  KEY `PostTypeId` (`PostTypeId`),
  KEY `AcceptedAnswerId` (`AcceptedAnswerId`),
  KEY `OwnerUserId` (`OwnerUserId`