CROSS APPLY是我在解决方案中使用的方法，因为它对我和客户的需求都有效。从我所读到的，应该提供最好的整体性能，如果他们的数据库大幅增长。

;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。

这是一个相当老的话题，但我想我要发表我的意见，就像公认的答案对我来说并不是特别有效一样。我在一个大型数据集上尝试了gbn的解决方案，发现它非常慢(在SQL Server 2012中500多万条记录上>45秒)。看一下执行计划，很明显问题在于它需要一个SORT操作，这会大大降低速度。

下面是我从实体框架中提取的一个替代方案，它不需要SORT操作，只进行非聚集索引搜索。这将在前面提到的记录集中将执行时间减少到< 2秒。

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

Now I'm assuming something that isn't entirely specified in the original question, but if your table design is such that your ID column is an auto-increment ID, and the DateCreated is set to the current date with each insert, then even without running with my query above you could actually get a sizable performance boost to gbn's solution (about half the execution time) just from ordering on ID instead of ordering on DateCreated as this will provide an identical sort order and it's a faster sort.

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。

试试这个:

SELECT [DocumentID]
    ,[tmpRez].value('/x[2]', 'varchar(20)') AS [Status]
    ,[tmpRez].value('/x[3]', 'datetime') AS [DateCreated]
FROM (
    SELECT [DocumentID]
        ,cast('<x>' + max(cast([ID] AS VARCHAR(10)) + '</x><x>' + [Status] + '</x><x>' + cast([DateCreated] AS VARCHAR(20))) + '</x>' AS XML) AS [tmpRez]
    FROM DocumentStatusLogs
    GROUP BY DocumentID
    ) AS [tmpQry]

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