"Travis Whitton" <tinymountain@gmail.com> writes:
> Given the following test table, I want to grab only the newest record and
> disregard any older duplicates based on name. Is this the most efficient way
> to do it?
No, it's gonna be pretty awful. The best way I know of involves
DISTINCT ON (see the "weather reports" example in the SELECT reference
page). Unfortunately that's a Postgres-only construct. If you want
something portable then you'll need something messy with subqueries...
regards, tom lane