Is this at the design stage, or on an existing system?

Sounds like you have a working solution but are worried about 
efficiency. Is a collection table with 100 entries really worth 
bothering about?

- Bernie
On 17/7/20 1:00 pm, Kevin Zawicki wrote:
> I have two tables A and B.
> each has a unique part # column
> 
> There is item name table with the part # and then two tables with part #
> and sub part #
> 
> M part# and info
> A active   part#, subpart#
> B retired  part#, subpart#
> 
> A list of parts, and one table with active subparts of the part, one table
> with the retired subparts on the part.
> 
> subparts are unique and a subpart cannot be in both tables
> 
> 
> each subpart "child table" has a date column
> each part may have zero to many subparts in either table
> 
> I need to get the last x number (3-5) subparts by date from both tables.
> 
> example
> If I have part 12345 and want the get the latest 5 entries by date and they
> may be in A or B or both.
> 
> 
> I can query and collect from both tables and then sort and grab top 5.
> 
> But this may put 100s of rows in the collection table just to get the top
> 5.
> 
> Using QBE or local SQL is there a better way to get the latest 5?
> 
> Even if I get the latest 5 from A and latest 5 from B (if they have 5) then
> latest 5 from collection it would be more efficient than getting the entire
> set of subparts.
> 
> Is there a way to do TOP 5 in local SQL?
> 
> 
>