Retrieving the last record in each group - MySQL
Asked 07 September, 2021
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Votes

There is a table messages that contains data as shown below:

Id   Name   Other_Columns
-------------------------
1    A       A_data_1
2    A       A_data_2
3    A       A_data_3
4    B       B_data_1
5    B       B_data_2
6    C       C_data_1

If I run a query select * from messages group by name, I will get the result as:

1    A       A_data_1
4    B       B_data_1
6    C       C_data_1

What query will return the following result?

3    A       A_data_3
5    B       B_data_2
6    C       C_data_1

That is, the last record in each group should be returned.

At present, this is the query that I use:

SELECT
  *
FROM (SELECT
  *
FROM messages
ORDER BY id DESC) AS x
GROUP BY name

But this looks highly inefficient. Any other ways to achieve the same result?

30 Answer