Posted by Jerry Stuckle on 12/02/07 19:33

Oliver Grätz wrote:
> Ciaran schrieb:
>> Cool solution there Chuck - best one so far by my reckoning! My select
>> statement is too complicated for me to sort results by date as Oliver
>> suggested - It's selecting various fields across multiple tables.
>
> That doesn't matter. If your query is "too complicated", you can always
> work with subqueries:
>
> SELECT wanted_field_1,wanted_field_2
> FROM (SELECT with your complicated query)
> AS subtable
> ORDER BY field_you_want_to have_the_max_value DESC
> LIMIT 1
>

Subqueries are almost never correct. Joins are much better.

> You are learning at the wrong end! If you say "my select statement is
> too complicated" you are saying "I should learn to understand my query"
> and not "It's bloated already, so let me find an even more bloated way
> to search through my results".
>
> Rule of thumb: If you have to sort/rearrange/manipulate your database
> query result afterwards, then your query was wrong in the first place.
>
> MySQL in version 5 has matured on the language level. You can even store
> your complicated query as a VIEW and then select the maximum from that
> view instead.
>
> => Invest one or two hours in reading some docs on http://dev.mysql.com
>
> OLLi
>


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Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
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