Re: Find min year and min value

Stefan Schwarzer wrote:
>> SELECT year, value FROM ...
>
> I feel ashamed.... such a simple solution... gush.... Thanks for that!

Can be easy to over-complicate things when you've been thinking about
them too long.

> Unfortunately it doesn't stop there...
>
> If I want to find the "common smallest year" for two given variables
> (say, I have years 1970, 1971,.... 2005 for variable 1 (GDP) and 1980,
> 1981,... 2003) for variable 2 (Fish Catch) ). It should come up with
> 1980 for a given country, if there is a value for that year in both
> variables. Otherwise 1981, etc...

In that case you will need two subqueries, but it's just a matter of
converting your description to SQL.

SELECT
   yr1,
   gdp.val1 AS gdp_val,
   fish_catch.val2 AS fish_catch_val
FROM
   (SELECT year AS yr1, value AS val1 FROM data WHERE id_variable = 1
   ) AS gdp,
   (SELECT year AS yr2, value AS val2 FROM data WHERE id_variable = 2
   ) AS fish_catch
WHERE
   gdp.yr1 = fish_catch.yr2
ORDER BY
   gdp.yr1
LIMIT 1;

Here I've aliases (renamed) the columns and the sub-queries, but I'd
probably just alias the sub-queries in real-life.

You could write it as a JOIN if you prefer that style, or use the MIN()
aggregate (although I'd guess that the ORDER BY/LIMIT might prove faster).

So, I'd perhaps use:

SELECT gdp.year, gdp.val AS gdp_val, fish_catch.val AS fish_catch_val
FROM
   (SELECT year,value FROM data WHERE id_variable=1) AS gdp
JOIN
   (SELECT year, value FROM data WHERE id_variable=2) AS fish_catch
USING (year)
ORDER BY gdp.year
LIMIT 1;

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd