Moops

I had an interesting conversation at work where someone questioned my use of DENSE_RANK and suggested I use LAST_VALUE. We had a good conversation about it, but ultimately agreed to disagree about the specific scenario. My code was accurate with no performance issues warranting a rewrite. My feeling was the person I was talking too was less familiar with DENSE_RANK and so favored LAST_VALUE. I get preference, I have my own, but I try to be aware of what's preference vs. what's technically superior.

I'm curious about people's thoughts on when to use LAST_VALUE() vs MAX() KEEP(DENSE_RANK LAST ORDER BY ). To my mind, both solve a similar problem. I lean towards DENSE_RANK largely out of preference due to the syntax being shorter (literally just less characters to type), and I also like that since DENSE_RANK is an aggregate function it outputs distinct results without needing to use the DISTINCT keyword. I haven't intentionally run tests comparing the two, but anecdotally I've never noticed a performance difference between the two when writing comparable queries.

Surprisingly I couldn't really find any detailed articles or discussions online comparing these two functions and I'm curious what thoughts are out there in the wild.

There she is, looking all fine. Had to get one more peek before calling it a night a little early. We have a hot date in the morning.