Get top 1 row of each group

I know this is an old thread but the TOP 1 WITH TIES solutions is quite nice and might be helpful to some reading through the solutions.

select top 1 with ties
   DocumentID
  ,Status
  ,DateCreated
from DocumentStatusLogs
order by row_number() over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated desc)

The select top 1 with ties clause tells SQL Server that you want to return the first row per group. But how does SQL Server know how to group up the data? This is where the order by row_number() over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated desc comes in. The column/columns after partition by defines how SQL Server groups up the data. Within each group, the rows will be sorted based on the order by columns. Once sorted, the top row in each group will be returned in the query.

More about the TOP clause can be found here.

This is one of the most easily found question on the topic, so I wanted to give a modern answer to the it (both for my reference and to help others out). By using first_value and over you can make short work of the above query:

Select distinct DocumentID
  , first_value(status) over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated Desc) as Status
  , first_value(DateCreated) over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated Desc) as DateCreated
From DocumentStatusLogs

This should work in Sql Server 2008 and up. First_value can be thought of as a way to accomplish Select Top 1 when using an over clause. Over allows grouping in the select list so instead of writing nested subqueries (like many of the existing answers do), this does it in a more readable fashion. Hope this helps.

Here are 3 separate approaches to the problem in hand along with the best choices of indexing for each of those queries (please try out the indexes yourselves and see the logical read, elapsed time, execution plan. I have provided the suggestions from my experience on such queries without executing for this specific problem).

Approach 1: Using ROW_NUMBER(). If rowstore index is not being able to enhance the performance, you can try out nonclustered/clustered columnstore index as for queries with aggregation and grouping and for tables which are ordered by in different columns all the times, columnstore index usually is the best choice.

;WITH CTE AS
    (
       SELECT   *,
                RN = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
       FROM     DocumentStatusLogs
    )
    SELECT  ID      
        ,DocumentID 
        ,Status     
        ,DateCreated
    FROM    CTE
    WHERE   RN = 1;

Approach 2: Using FIRST_VALUE. If rowstore index is not being able to enhance the performance, you can try out nonclustered/clustered columnstore index as for queries with aggregation and grouping and for tables which are ordered by in different columns all the times, columnstore index usually is the best choice.

SELECT  DISTINCT
    ID      = FIRST_VALUE(ID) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
    ,DocumentID
    ,Status     = FIRST_VALUE(Status) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
    ,DateCreated    = FIRST_VALUE(DateCreated) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
FROM    DocumentStatusLogs;

Approach 3: Using CROSS APPLY. Creating rowstore index on DocumentStatusLogs table covering the columns used in the query should be enough to cover the query without need of a columnstore index.

SELECT  DISTINCT
    ID      = CA.ID
    ,DocumentID = D.DocumentID
    ,Status     = CA.Status 
    ,DateCreated    = CA.DateCreated
FROM    DocumentStatusLogs D
    CROSS APPLY (
            SELECT  TOP 1 I.*
            FROM    DocumentStatusLogs I
            WHERE   I.DocumentID = D.DocumentID
            ORDER   BY I.DateCreated DESC
            ) CA;

This solution can be used to get the TOP N most recent rows for each partition (in the example, N is 1 in the WHERE statement and partition is doc_id):

SELECT T.doc_id, T.status, T.date_created FROM 
(
    SELECT a.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY doc_id ORDER BY date_created DESC) AS rnk FROM doc a
) T
WHERE T.rnk = 1;

CROSS APPLY was the method I used for my solution, as it worked for me, and for my clients needs. And from what I've read, should provide the best overall performance should their database grow substantially.

I believe this can be done just like this. This might need some tweaking but you can just select the max from the group.

These answers are overkill..

SELECT
  d.DocumentID,
  MAX(d.Status),
  MAX(d1.DateCreated)
FROM DocumentStatusLogs d, DocumentStatusLogs d1
USING DocumentID
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 3 DESC

SELECT documentid, 
       status, 
       datecreated 
FROM   documentstatuslogs dlogs 
WHERE  status = (SELECT status 
                 FROM   documentstatuslogs 
                 WHERE  documentid = dlogs.documentid 
                 ORDER  BY datecreated DESC 
                 LIMIT  1) 

Some database engines* are starting to support the QUALIFY clause that allows to filter the result of window functions (which the accepted answer uses).

So the accepted answer can become

SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC) AS rn
FROM DocumentStatusLogs
QUALIFY rn = 1

See this article for an in depth explanation: https://jrandrews.net/the-joy-of-qualify

You can use this tool to see which database support this clause: https://www.jooq.org/translate/ There is an option to transform the qualify clause when the target dialect does not support it.

*Teradata, BigQuery, H2, Snowflake...