How to select the first row of each group?

Question

I have a table like this:

 ID |  Val   |  Kind
----------------------
 1  |  1337  |   2
 2  |  1337  |   1
 3  |   3    |   4
 4  |   3    |   4

I want to make a SELECT that will return just the first row for each Val, ordering by Kind.

Sample output:

 ID |  Val   |  Kind
----------------------
 2  |  1337  |   1
 3  |   3    |   4

How can I build this query?

Answer 1

Use a common table expression (CTE) and a windowing/ranking/partitioning function like ROW_NUMBER.

This query will create an in-memory table called ORDERED and add an additional column of rn which is a sequence of numbers from 1 to N. The PARTITION BY indicates it should restart at 1 every time the value of Val changes and we want to order rows by the smallest value of Kind.

;
WITH ORDERED AS
(
SELECT
    ID
,   Val
,   kind
,   ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY Val ORDER BY Kind ASC) AS rn
FROM
    mytable
)
SELECT
    ID
,   Val
,   Kind
FROM
    ORDERED
WHERE
    rn = 1

Answer 2

Assuming id is unique (like Leigh's answer), yet another alternative is:

select * from mytable where id in 
  (select min(id) keep (dense_rank first order by kind) from mytable group by val);

ID                     VAL                    KIND                   
---------------------- ---------------------- ---------------------- 
2                      1337                   1                      
3                      3                      4                      

Answer 3

bilinkc's solution works fine, but I thought I'd toss mine out as well. It has the same cost, but might be faster (or slower, I haven't tested it). The difference is that it uses the First_Value instead of Row_Number. Since we are only interested in the first value, in my mind it is more straightforward.

SELECT ID, Val, Kind FROM
(
   SELECT First_Value(ID) OVER (PARTITION BY Val ORDER BY Kind) First, ID, Val, Kind 
   FROM mytable
)
WHERE ID = First;

Test Data.

--drop table mytable;
create table mytable (ID Number(5) Primary Key, Val Number(5), Kind Number(5));

insert into mytable values (1,1337,2);
insert into mytable values (2,1337,1);
insert into mytable values (3,3,4);
insert into mytable values (4,3,4);

If you prefer, here is the CTE equivalent.

WITH FirstIDentified AS (
   SELECT First_Value(ID) OVER (PARTITION BY Val ORDER BY Kind) First, ID, Val, Kind 
   FROM mytable
   )
SELECT ID, Val, Kind FROM FirstIdentified
WHERE ID = First;