Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 17:34:49 -0600
From: Michael Fuhr <mike@fuhr.org>
To: Lane Van Ingen <lvaningen@esncc.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Can EXCEPT Be Used for To Solve This Problem?
Message-ID: <20050824233449.GA12396@winnie.fuhr.org>
References: <EKEMKEFLOMKDDLIALABIMEMGCBAA.lvaningen@esncc.com>
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In-Reply-To: <EKEMKEFLOMKDDLIALABIMEMGCBAA.lvaningen@esncc.com>

On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 04:47:16PM -0400, Lane Van Ingen wrote:
> Given the following data in a table named 'foo' :
>      id   update_time           description
>      2    2005-08-24 00:10:00   transaction1
>      2    2005-08-24 00:22:00   transaction2
>      2    2005-08-24 00:34:00   transaction3
>      2    2005-08-24 00:58:00   transaction4
> 
> I want to select 2nd oldest transaction from foo (transaction 3). The
> solution below
> works, but I think there may be a better way. Does anyone else have a better
> idea?

Do you want the 2nd oldest transaction from the entire table?  If
so then the following should work:

SELECT *
FROM foo
ORDER BY update_time
OFFSET 1
LIMIT 1;

If that's not what you're after then please elaborate.

-- 
Michael Fuhr