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
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
business | Name of the business (varchar) |
year_founded | Year the business was founded (int) |
category_code | Code for the business category (varchar) |
country_code | ISO 3166-1 three-letter country code (char) |
countries
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
country_code | ISO 3166-1 three-letter country code (varchar) |
country | Name of the country (varchar) |
continent | Name of the continent the country exists in (varchar) |
categories
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
category_code | Code for the business category (varchar) |
category | Description of the business category (varchar) |
SELECT sub1.year_founded, sub1.continent, sub1.country, sub1.business
FROM (SELECT b.year_founded, c.continent, c.country, b.business
FROM businesses AS b
JOIN countries AS c
ON b.country_code = c.country_code) AS sub1
JOIN (SELECT MIN(b.year_founded) AS year_founded, c.continent
FROM businesses AS b
JOIN countries AS c
ON b.country_code = c.country_code
GROUP BY c.continent) AS sub2
ON sub1.year_founded = sub2.year_founded-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
SELECT c.continent, COUNT(c.country) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM countries AS c
LEFT JOIN businesses AS b
ON c.country_code = b.country_code
LEFT JOIN new_businesses AS b2
ON c.country_code = b2.country_code
WHERE b.business IS NULL AND b2.business IS NULL
GROUP BY c.continent;-- Which business categories are best suited to last over the course of centuries?
SELECT country.continent, cat.category, MIN(b.year_founded) AS year_founded
FROM businesses as b
JOIN countries as country
ON b.country_code = country.country_code
JOIN categories as cat
ON b.category_code = cat.category_code
GROUP BY cat.category, country.continent
ORDER BY year_founded;