How can I select rows with most recent timestamp for each key value?

Question

I have a table of sensor data. Each row has a sensor id, a timestamp, and other fields. I want to select a single row with latest timestamp for each sensor, including some o

Answer 1

I had mostly the same problem and ended up a a different solution that makes this type of problem trivial to query.

I have a table of sensor data (1 minute data from about 30 sensors)

SensorReadings->(timestamp,value,idSensor)

and I have a sensor table that has lots of mostly static stuff about the sensor but the relevant fields are these:

Sensors->(idSensor,Description,tvLastUpdate,tvLastValue,...)

The tvLastupdate and tvLastValue are set in a trigger on inserts to the SensorReadings table. I always have direct access to these values without needing to do any expensive queries. This does denormalize slightly. The query is trivial:

SELECT idSensor,Description,tvLastUpdate,tvLastValue 
FROM Sensors

I use this method for data that is queried often. In my case I have a sensor table, and a large event table, that have data coming in at the minute level AND dozens of machines are updating dashboards and graphs with that data. With my data scenario the trigger-and-cache method works well.