After working with this query I modified it slightly to return only the next_contact date:
select p.person_id, p.lname, p.fname, p.direct_phone, p.active, o.org_name, sq.* from people as p join organizations as o on p.org_id = o.org_id cross join lateral (select a.next_contact from activities as a where a.person_id = p.person_id and p.active='True' and a.next_contact is not null order by a.next_contact DESC limit 1) sq;
It works wellm, but the row order is not that of a.next_contact. In fact, there seems to be no order in the returned set. The next_contact column is in the lateral sub-query. Does this make a difference? I've no idea how to modify the query so that returned rows are in decreasing next_contact order.
Best regards,
Rich
You need the ORDER BY in the outer join. (And I don't think the one inside the lateral join is doing you any good). Try: