Aggregate functions in WHERE clause in SQLite

Question

Simply put, I have a table with, among other things, a column for timestamps. I want to get the row with the most recent (i.e. greatest value) timestamp. Currently I'm doing this:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 1

But I'd much rather do something like this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE timestamp=max(timestamp)

However, SQLite rejects this query:

SQL error: misuse of aggregate function max()

The documentation confirms this behavior (bottom of page):

Aggregate functions may only be used in a SELECT statement.

My question is: is it possible to write a query to get the row with the greatest timestamp without ordering the select and limiting the number of returned rows to 1? This seems like it should be possible, but I guess my SQL-fu isn't up to snuff.

Answer 1

SELECT * from foo where timestamp = (select max(timestamp) from foo)

or, if SQLite insists on treating subselects as sets,

SELECT * from foo where timestamp in (select max(timestamp) from foo)

Answer 2

I think I've answered this question 5 times in the past week now, but I'm too tired to find a link to one of those right now, so here it is again...

SELECT
     *
FROM
     table T1
LEFT OUTER JOIN table T2 ON
     T2.timestamp > T1.timestamp
WHERE
     T2.timestamp IS NULL

You're basically looking for the row where no other row matches that is later than it.

NOTE: As pointed out in the comments, this method will not perform as well in this kind of situation. It will usually work better (for SQL Server at least) in situations where you want the last row for each customer (as an example).

Answer 3

you can simply do SELECT *, max(timestamp) FROM table