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;

SQLFIDDLE

Answer 2

Give this a shot:

SELECT i.year, i.quarter, i.type, i.message
FROM INFO i
JOIN INFO iy
    ON i.type = iy.type
JOIN INFO iq
    ON iq.type = iy.type    
WHERE i.type IN (1,2)   
GROUP BY i.year, i.quarter, i.type, i.message   
HAVING i.year = MAX(iy.year) AND i.quarter = MAX(iq.quarter)