Question

T-SQL Returning nearest date

Asked by: helpdeskis

Hi. I'm trying to retrieve the unique ID's closest to today's date. So only ID's 1,2,3 that have the newest dates. See table below. Thanks.
----------------------------------------------
myDate                               ID
----------------------------------------------
4/02/2009 12:00:00 AM      1
1/05/2009 12:00:00 AM      1
3/07/2009 12:00:00 AM      3
6/07/2009 12:00:00 AM      3
8/07/2009 12:00:00 AM      1
8/07/2009 12:00:00 AM      2

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Asked On
2009-07-07 at 17:15:32ID24551581
Tags

T-SQL Nearest date

Topics

SQL Server 2005

,

SQL Query Syntax

Participating Experts
4
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: mrjoltcolaPosted on 2009-07-07 at 17:19:43ID: 24799682

Assuming all dates are in the past, this should work.

select id, max(myDate) from tbl
group by id;

 

by: mwvisa1Posted on 2009-07-07 at 17:20:39ID: 24799686

How are you defining nearest?  Within what interval?  In other words, has to be within a month ago or in the future or within a month either way or etc...

 

by: mrjoltcolaPosted on 2009-07-07 at 17:21:55ID: 24799688

If not, just add a where clause:

select id, max(myDate) from tbl
where myDate < getdate()
group by id;

 

by: mwvisa1Posted on 2009-07-07 at 17:22:19ID: 24799689

Or possibly you meant max (newest) date for each ID like MrJoltCola showed.  That would make sense, especially if your date format above is dd/MM/yyyy versus MM/dd/yyyy as I thought it was.

 

by: chapmandewPosted on 2009-07-07 at 17:29:11ID: 24799716

here are how you can find the dates closest to the current date...


select case when datediff(d, mindate, convert(varchar(10), getdate(), 101)) > datediff(d, maxdate, convert(varchar(10), getdate(), 101)) then maxdate else mindate end
from (
select as mindate = max(mydate) from tablename
where mydate < convert(varchar(10), getdate(), 101),
select as maxdate= min(mydate) from tablename
where mydate > convert(varchar(10), getdate(), 101)
) a

 

by: imitchiePosted on 2009-07-07 at 19:48:40ID: 24800175

Since you have posted in sql server 2005, here you go.
As you can see, I have put some comments in case you need to vary it slightly to suit your needs.

select ID, myDate
from (
	select rn=ROW_NUMBER() over (order by myDate desc)
	where myDate <= GETDATE() -- closest (on or before) current date(time)
) X
where rn = 1 -- only one record for each unique ID
                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: imitchiePosted on 2009-07-07 at 19:49:51ID: 24800185

Apologies, I forgot to add the columns into the inner select.  You can add other columns just as easily.

select ID, myDate
from (
        select rn=ROW_NUMBER(), ID, myDate over (order by myDate desc)
        where myDate <= GETDATE() -- closest (on or before) current date(time)
) X
where rn = 1 -- only one record for each unique ID

                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: helpdeskisPosted on 2009-07-07 at 21:41:11ID: 31600951

Thanks,that gets the job done.

 

by: mrjoltcolaPosted on 2009-07-07 at 21:44:22ID: 24800643

Hi, I am not objecting, but I am curious why this solution was chosen over the other valid ones?

 

by: mwvisa1Posted on 2009-07-08 at 06:06:00ID: 24803251

I would agree.  That is a whole lot of code to just get ID and max date per ID which seems like what you wanted.  You would use the accepted approach if you had additional columns of data necessary that could not be aggregated.  If all you have is the column or columns that you are grouping by and columns that need aggregation like max(date) then http:#24799688 is much simpler (KISS principle).

 

by: helpdeskisPosted on 2009-07-08 at 17:31:23ID: 24809704

I didn't want max date per ID, I wanted max date of only ID's 1,2,3. So if I added additional ID's like 4 & 5, then return only ID's 1,2,3,4,5. As you can see, there are mutliple ID's with different dates.

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