How to select records with maximum values in two columns?

Question

It was hard to come up with an understandable title for this question. I\'ll try to explain with an example.

First I had a simple table INFO in Oracle

Answer 1

Analytic functions are your friend:

SELECT   MAX( year    ) KEEP ( DENSE_RANK LAST ORDER BY year ASC, quarter ASC, message ASC ) AS year,
         MAX( quarter ) KEEP ( DENSE_RANK LAST ORDER BY year ASC, quarter ASC, message ASC ) AS quarter,
         MAX( message ) KEEP ( DENSE_RANK LAST ORDER BY year ASC, quarter ASC, message ASC ) AS message,
         type
FROM     info
GROUP BY type;

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