从上面验证克林特的正确答案:

下面两个查询之间的性能非常有趣。52%是最高的。48%是第二个。使用DISTINCT而不是ORDER BY提高了4%的性能。但是ORDER BY具有按多列排序的优势。

IF (OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#DocumentStatusLogs') IS NOT NULL) BEGIN DROP TABLE #DocumentStatusLogs END

CREATE TABLE #DocumentStatusLogs (
    [ID] int NOT NULL,
    [DocumentID] int NOT NULL,
    [Status] varchar(20),
    [DateCreated] datetime
)

INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (2, 1, 'S1', '7/29/2011 1:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (3, 1, 'S2', '7/30/2011 2:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (6, 1, 'S1', '8/02/2011 3:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (1, 2, 'S1', '7/28/2011 4:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (4, 2, 'S2', '7/30/2011 5:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (5, 2, 'S3', '8/01/2011 6:00:00')
INSERT INTO #DocumentStatusLogs([ID], [DocumentID], [Status], [DateCreated]) VALUES (6, 3, 'S1', '8/02/2011 7:00:00')

选项1:

    SELECT
    [Extent1].[ID], 
    [Extent1].[DocumentID],
    [Extent1].[Status], 
    [Extent1].[DateCreated]
FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent1]
    OUTER APPLY (
        SELECT TOP 1
            [Extent2].[ID], 
            [Extent2].[DocumentID],
            [Extent2].[Status], 
            [Extent2].[DateCreated]
        FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent2]
        WHERE [Extent1].[DocumentID] = [Extent2].[DocumentID]
        ORDER BY [Extent2].[DateCreated] DESC, [Extent2].[ID] DESC
    ) AS [Project2]
WHERE ([Project2].[ID] IS NULL OR [Project2].[ID] = [Extent1].[ID])

选项2:

SELECT 
    [Limit1].[DocumentID] AS [ID], 
    [Limit1].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], 
    [Limit1].[Status] AS [Status], 
    [Limit1].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
FROM (
    SELECT DISTINCT [Extent1].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID] FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent1]
) AS [Distinct1]
    OUTER APPLY  (
        SELECT TOP (1) [Project2].[ID] AS [ID], [Project2].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], [Project2].[Status] AS [Status], [Project2].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
        FROM (
            SELECT 
                [Extent2].[ID] AS [ID], 
                [Extent2].[DocumentID] AS [DocumentID], 
                [Extent2].[Status] AS [Status], 
                [Extent2].[DateCreated] AS [DateCreated]
            FROM #DocumentStatusLogs AS [Extent2]
            WHERE [Distinct1].[DocumentID] = [Extent2].[DocumentID]
        )  AS [Project2]
        ORDER BY [Project2].[ID] DESC
    ) AS [Limit1]

在Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio中:在突出显示并运行第一个块后，突出显示选项1和选项2，右键单击->[显示估计的执行计划]。然后运行整个程序以查看结果。

选项1结果:

ID  DocumentID  Status  DateCreated
6   1   S1  8/2/11 3:00
5   2   S3  8/1/11 6:00
6   3   S1  8/2/11 7:00

选项2结果:

ID  DocumentID  Status  DateCreated
6   1   S1  8/2/11 3:00
5   2   S3  8/1/11 6:00
6   3   S1  8/2/11 7:00

注意:

当我想要一个连接为1到-(多个连接中的1个)时，我倾向于使用APPLY。 如果我想要连接为1对多或多对多，则使用JOIN。 我使用ROW_NUMBER()避免CTE，除非我需要做一些高级的事情，并且可以接受窗口性能损失。

我还避免在WHERE或ON子句中使用EXISTS / IN子查询，因为我曾经经历过这样会导致一些糟糕的执行计划。但具体里程各不相同。在需要的时候随时随地检查执行计划和概要文件的性能!

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;

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。

SELECT documentid, 
       status, 
       datecreated 
FROM   documentstatuslogs dlogs 
WHERE  status = (SELECT status 
                 FROM   documentstatuslogs 
                 WHERE  documentid = dlogs.documentid 
                 ORDER  BY datecreated DESC 
                 LIMIT  1) 

;WITH cte AS
(
   SELECT *,
         ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC) AS rn
   FROM DocumentStatusLogs
)
SELECT *
FROM cte
WHERE rn = 1

如果您希望每天有2个条目，那么这将任意选择一个。要获得一天的两个条目，请使用DENSE_RANK代替

至于是否正常化，这取决于你是否想:

在两个地方保持状态 保存状态历史 .．.

目前，您保留了状态历史。如果你也想在父表中保持最新状态(这是非规范化的)，你需要一个触发器来维持父表中的“状态”。或者删除这个状态历史表。

一些数据库引擎*开始支持允许过滤窗口函数结果的qualifier子句(接受的答案使用该子句)。

所以公认的答案可以变成

SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY DocumentID ORDER BY DateCreated DESC) AS rn
FROM DocumentStatusLogs
QUALIFY rn = 1

查看这篇文章以获得更深入的解释:https://jrandrews.net/the-joy-of-qualify

您可以使用此工具查看哪个数据库支持此子句:https://www.jooq.org/translate/ 当目标方言不支持qualifier子句时，可以选择转换它。

*Teradata, BigQuery, H2, Snowflake…