此解决方案可用于获取每个分区的TOP N最近行(在本例中，WHERE语句中的N为1,partition为doc_id):

SELECT T.doc_id, T.status, T.date_created FROM 
(
    SELECT a.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY doc_id ORDER BY date_created DESC) AS rnk FROM doc a
) T
WHERE T.rnk = 1;

I've done some timings over the various recommendations here, and the results really depend on the size of the table involved, but the most consistent solution is using the CROSS APPLY These tests were run against SQL Server 2008-R2, using a table with 6,500 records, and another (identical schema) with 137 million records. The columns being queried are part of the primary key on the table, and the table width is very small (about 30 bytes). The times are reported by SQL Server from the actual execution plan.

Query                                  Time for 6500 (ms)    Time for 137M(ms)

CROSS APPLY                                    17.9                17.9
SELECT WHERE col = (SELECT MAX(COL)…)           6.6               854.4
DENSE_RANK() OVER PARTITION                     6.6               907.1

我认为真正令人惊讶的是，无论涉及的行数是多少，CROSS APPLY的时间都是如此一致。

这是这个话题中最容易找到的问题之一，所以我想给出一个现代的答案(既供我参考，也帮助其他人)。通过使用first_value和over，你可以简化上面的查询:

Select distinct DocumentID
  , first_value(status) over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated Desc) as Status
  , first_value(DateCreated) over (partition by DocumentID order by DateCreated Desc) as DateCreated
From DocumentStatusLogs

这应该工作在Sql Server 2008及更高。First_value可以被认为是在使用over子句时实现Select Top 1的一种方法。Over允许在选择列表中分组，而不是编写嵌套的子查询(像许多现有的答案那样)，这以一种更可读的方式进行。希望这能有所帮助。

SELECT o.*
FROM `DocumentStatusLogs` o                   
  LEFT JOIN `DocumentStatusLogs` b                   
  ON o.DocumentID = b.DocumentID AND o.DateCreated < b.DateCreated
 WHERE b.DocumentID is NULL ;

如果您只想按DateCreated返回最近的文档顺序，它将只按documententid返回前1个文档

如果你担心性能问题，你也可以用MAX()这样做:

SELECT *
FROM DocumentStatusLogs D
WHERE DateCreated = (SELECT MAX(DateCreated) FROM DocumentStatusLogs WHERE ID = D.ID)

ROW_NUMBER()要求对SELECT语句中的所有行进行排序，而MAX则不需要。应该会大大加快你的查询速度。

这里有3种不同的方法来解决这个问题，以及为每个查询建立索引的最佳选择(请自己尝试索引，并查看逻辑读取、消耗时间和执行计划。我根据自己的经验提供了关于此类查询的建议，但没有针对这个特定问题执行)。

方法1:使用ROW_NUMBER()。如果rowstore索引不能提高性能，对于具有聚合和分组的查询以及始终按不同列排序的表，可以尝试使用非聚集/聚集的columnstore索引，columnstore索引通常是最佳选择。

;WITH CTE AS
    (
       SELECT   *,
                RN = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
       FROM     DocumentStatusLogs
    )
    SELECT  ID      
        ,DocumentID 
        ,Status     
        ,DateCreated
    FROM    CTE
    WHERE   RN = 1;

方法2:使用FIRST_VALUE。如果rowstore索引不能提高性能，对于具有聚合和分组的查询以及始终按不同列排序的表，可以尝试使用非聚集/聚集的columnstore索引，columnstore索引通常是最佳选择。

SELECT  DISTINCT
    ID      = FIRST_VALUE(ID) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
    ,DocumentID
    ,Status     = FIRST_VALUE(Status) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
    ,DateCreated    = FIRST_VALUE(DateCreated) OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC)
FROM    DocumentStatusLogs;

方法3:使用CROSS APPLY。在DocumentStatusLogs表上创建涵盖查询中使用的列的行存储索引应该足以覆盖查询，而不需要columnstore索引。

SELECT  DISTINCT
    ID      = CA.ID
    ,DocumentID = D.DocumentID
    ,Status     = CA.Status 
    ,DateCreated    = CA.DateCreated
FROM    DocumentStatusLogs D
    CROSS APPLY (
            SELECT  TOP 1 I.*
            FROM    DocumentStatusLogs I
            WHERE   I.DocumentID = D.DocumentID
            ORDER   BY I.DateCreated DESC
            ) CA;