Get value based on max of a different column grouped by another column [duplicate]

Answer 1

You can approach this using row_number():

select key, val
from (select t.*, row_number() over (partition by key order by num desc) as seqnum
      from table_name t
     ) t
where seqnum = 1;

Whether you consider this more "elegant" is probably a matter of taste.

I should point out that this is subtly different from your query. This is guaranteed to return one row for each key; yours could return multiple rows. If you want that behavior, just use rank() or dense_rank() instead of row_number().