I've seen solutions for something similar on other posts, but I've been having an issue applying it to my specific problem.
Here is my initial join:
SELECT service_note_task, comment_id, comment FROM service_note_task LEFT JOIN service_note_task_comments ON service_note_task.service_note_task_id = service_note_task_comments.service_note_task_id;
Which results in:
+-----------------------------+------------+--------------+
| service_note_task | comment_id | comment |
+-----------------------------+------------+--------------+
| This is service note task 3 | 25 | Comment |
| This is service note task 3 | 26 | Comment Blah |
| This is service note task 3 | 36 | aaa |
| This is service note task 2 | 13 | Awesome comm |
| This is service note task 1 | 12 | Cool Comm |
+-----------------------------+------------+--------------+
But for each service_note_task, I really only need one row representing the comment with the highest comment_id, like this:
+-----------------------------+------------+--------------+
| service_note_task | comment_id | comment |
+-----------------------------+------------+--------------+
| This is service note task 3 | 36 | aaa |
| This is service note task 2 | 13 | Awesome comm |
| This is service note task 1 | 12 | Cool Comm |
+-----------------------------+------------+--------------+
I figure I could use MAX in a sub-select statement to narrow down the results as I want them. How can I incorporate that into my statement to get these results?
For reference, this is known as "groupwise-maximum"
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/example-maximum-column-group-row.html