Re: Find min year and min value

> SELECT year, value FROM ...

I feel ashamed.... such a simple solution... gush.... Thanks for that!

Unfortunately it doesn't stop there...

If I want to find the "common smallest year" for two given variables
(say, I have years 1970, 1971,.... 2005 for variable 1 (GDP) and
1980, 1981,... 2003) for variable 2 (Fish Catch) ). It should come up
with 1980 for a given country, if there is a value for that year in
both variables. Otherwise 1981, etc...

How would I do that? I really have no clue...

(my table looks something like this:

id_variable | year | value | id_country
---------------------------------------
1 | 2001 | 123 | 1
1 | 2002 | 125 | 1
1 | 2003 | 128 | 1
1 | 2004 | 132 | 1
1 | 2005 | 135 | 1

1 | 2001 | 412 | 2
1 | 2002 | 429 | 2
1 | 2003 | 456 | 2
1 | 2004 | 465 | 2
1 | 2005 | 477 | 2

....

2 | 1980 | 83 | 1
2 | 1981 | 89 | 1
....

)

Thanks for any hints,

Stef