Re: [SQL] DISTINCT ON: speak now or forever hold your peace - Mailing list pgsql-sql

Tom Lane wrote:
> 
> If I don't hear loud hollers very soon, I'm going to eliminate the
> DISTINCT ON "feature" for 7.0.  As previously discussed, this feature
> is not standard SQL and has no clear semantic interpretation.

I use 'distinct on' to get the most recent reports for each of a group of
locations.  E.g.:

create table reports (
location     varchar(16),
report_time  datetime,
report_text  text);

select distinct on location * from reports where location ~~ 'Lond%' order by
location, reporttime desc;

to get the tuples that offer the most recent reports for each of London,
Londonderry, Londy etc.

Is there an alternative?

Julian Scarfe