Create a SQL query to retrieve most recent records

Question

I am creating a status board module for my project team. The status board allows the user to to set their status as in or out and they can also provide a note. I was planning on storing all the information in a single table ... and example of the data follows:

Date               User         Status    Notes
-------------------------------------------------------
1/8/2009 12:00pm   B.Sisko      In        Out to lunch    
1/8/2009 8:00am    B.Sisko      In  
1/7/2009 5:00pm    B.Sisko      In    
1/7/2009 8:00am    B.Sisko      In    
1/7/2009 8:00am    K.Janeway    In   
1/5/2009 8:00am    K.Janeway    In    
1/1/2009 8:00am    J.Picard     Out       Vacation  

I would like to query the data and return the most recent status for each user, in this case, my query would return the following results:

Date               User         Status    Notes
-------------------------------------------------------  
1/8/2009 12:00pm   B.Sisko      In        Out to lunch    
1/7/2009 8:00am    K.Janeway    In   
1/1/2009 8:00am    J.Picard     Out       Vacation  

I am try to figure out the TRANSACT-SQL to make this happen? Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Aggregate in a subquery derived table and then join to it.

 Select Date, User, Status, Notes 
    from [SOMETABLE]
    inner join 
    (
        Select max(Date) as LatestDate, [User]
        from [SOMETABLE]
        Group by User
    ) SubMax 
    on [SOMETABLE].Date = SubMax.LatestDate
    and [SOMETABLE].User = SubMax.User