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Staffelter Hof Winery is Germany's oldest business, established in 862 under the Carolingian dynasty. It has continued to serve customers through dramatic changes in Europe, such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and both world wars. What characteristics enable a business to stand the test of time?

To help answer this question, BusinessFinancing.co.uk researched the oldest company still in business in almost every country and compiled the results into several CSV files. This dataset has been cleaned.

Having useful information in different files is a common problem. While it's better to keep different types of data separate for data storage, you'll want all the data in one place for analysis. You'll use joining and data manipulation to work with this data and better understand the world's oldest businesses.

The Data

businesses and new_businesses

ColumnDescription
businessName of the business (varchar)
year_foundedYear the business was founded (int)
category_codeCode for the business category (varchar)
country_codeISO 3166-1 three-letter country code (char)

countries

ColumnDescription
country_codeISO 3166-1 three-letter country code (varchar)
countryName of the country (varchar)
continentName of the continent the country exists in (varchar)

categories

ColumnDescription
category_codeCode for the business category (varchar)
categoryDescription of the business category (varchar)
Spinner
DataFrameas
oldest_business_continent
variable
-- What is the oldest business on each continent?
WITH oldest_ranked AS (
SELECT
	continent,
	country,
	business,
	year_founded,
	ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY continent ORDER BY year_founded) as rank_n
FROM countries AS co
INNER JOIN businesses AS b
ON b.country_code = co.country_code
GROUP BY continent, country, business, year_founded
)

SELECT 
	continent,
	country,
	business,
	year_founded
FROM oldest_ranked
WHERE rank_n = 1;
Spinner
DataFrameas
count_missing
variable
-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
WITH missing_business AS (
SELECT
	country,
	SUM(CASE 
	   		WHEN b.business IS NULL AND nb.business IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM countries AS c
FULL OUTER JOIN businesses AS b
ON b.country_code = c.country_code
FULL OUTER JOIN new_businesses AS nb
ON nb.country_code = c.country_code
GROUP BY country
)

SELECT
	continent,
	SUM(countries_without_businesses) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM missing_business
INNER JOIN countries AS c
ON c.country = missing_business.country
GROUP BY continent;
Spinner
DataFrameas
oldest_by_continent_category
variable
-- Which business categories are best suited to last over the course of centuries?
SELECT
	continent,
	category,
	MIN(year_founded) AS year_founded
FROM countries AS co
INNER JOIN businesses AS b
ON b.country_code = co.country_code
INNER JOIN categories AS ca
ON ca.category_code = b.category_code
GROUP BY continent, category;