Sql-server – SQL Joins : How to i get latest record from 2nd table (one to many relationship)

If all the tables use the MyISAM Storage Engine and have the same table structure, I have some good news for you.

You can create a single table that consumes no additional space except a .frm file and some mapping info. The key is to take advantage of the MERGE (MRG_MyISAM) Storage Engine.

Here is how you can do this:

CREATE TABLE XMerge LIKE X1;
ALTER TABLE XMerge ENGINE=MRG_MYISAM
UNION=(X1,X2,X3,X4) INSERT_METHOD=LAST;

Using this method, you can query the 4 tables at the same time like this:

SELECT ReqF FROM XMerge WHERE EmpName='John';

Was that simple, or what ???

In your case, you have 75 tables. You would do this:

CREATE TABLE XMerge LIKE X1;
ALTER TABLE XMerge ENGINE=MRG_MYISAM
UNION=(X1,X2,X3,X4,X5,X6,X7,X8,X9,
X10,X11,X12,X13,X14,X15,X16,X17,X18,X19,
X20,X21,X22,X23,X24,X25,X26,X27,X28,X29,
X30,X31,X32,X33,X34,X35,X36,X37,X38,X39,
X40,X41,X42,X43,X44,X45,X46,X47,X48,X49,
X50,X51,X52,X53,X54,X55,X56,X57,X58,X59,
X60,X61,X62,X63,X64,X65,X66,X67,X68,X69,
X70,X71,X72,X73,X74,X75) INSERT_METHOD=LAST;
SELECT ReqF FROM XMerge WHERE EmpName='John';

The beauty of this is that creating a MERGE table takes milliseconds. Just make sure every table has an index on EmpName. Better to do 75 indexed lookups that 75 full table scans. If there is no index on EmpName, you need to do this:

ALTER TABLE X1 ADD UNIQUE KEY (EmpName);
ALTER TABLE X2 ADD UNIQUE KEY (EmpName);
.
.
.
ALTER TABLE X75 ADD UNIQUE KEY (EmpName);
CREATE TABLE XMerge LIKE X1;
ALTER TABLE XMerge ENGINE=MRG_MYISAM
UNION=(X1,X2,X3,X4,X5,X6,X7,X8,X9,
X10,X11,X12,X13,X14,X15,X16,X17,X18,X19,
X20,X21,X22,X23,X24,X25,X26,X27,X28,X29,
X30,X31,X32,X33,X34,X35,X36,X37,X38,X39,
X40,X41,X42,X43,X44,X45,X46,X47,X48,X49,
X50,X51,X52,X53,X54,X55,X56,X57,X58,X59,
X60,X61,X62,X63,X64,X65,X66,X67,X68,X69,
X70,X71,X72,X73,X74,X75) INSERT_METHOD=LAST;
SELECT ReqF FROM XMerge WHERE EmpName='John';

Give it a Try !!!

Thank you for SQLfiddle and sample data! I wish more questions started this way.

If you want all members regardless of whether they have an entry for that date, you want a LEFT OUTER JOIN. You were very close with this version however a little trick with outer joins is that if you add a filter to the outer table in the WHERE clause, you turn an outer join to an inner join, because it will exclude any rows that are NULL on that side (because it doesn't know if NULL would match the filter or not).

I modified the first query to get a row for every member:

SELECT Members.Member_ID
      ,Time_Entry.Date_Start
      ,Time_Entry.Hours_Actual
      ,Time_Entry.Hours_Bill
FROM dbo.Members
  LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Time_Entry
--^^^^ changed from FULL to LEFT
  ON Members.Member_ID = Time_Entry.Member_ID
  AND Time_Entry.Date_Start = '20131110';
--^^^ changed from WHERE to AND

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to take it from there and add the other columns, formatting, COALESCE etc.

Some other notes:

• please always use the schema prefix when creating and referencing objects

• please always use a length when converting to varchar etc.

• stay away from ambiguous, regional date formats like mm-dd-yyyy

• consider using aliases to make your queries easier to read. E.g. the above could be re-written as:

  SELECT m.Member_ID
    ,t.Date_Start
    ,t.Hours_Actual
    ,t.Hours_Bill
  FROM dbo.Members AS m
  LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Time_Entry AS t
  ON m.Member_ID = t.Member_ID
  AND t.Date_Start = '20131110';
  

  ... a lot tidier, IMHO, as long as you use sensible aliases.