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) |
-- What is the oldest business on each continent?
SELECT DISTINCT sub.continent, sub.country, sub.business, sub.year_founded
FROM
(
SELECT c.continent, MIN(b.year_founded) AS year_founded
FROM countries c JOIN businesses b ON c.country_code = b.country_code
GROUP BY c.continent
) sub_group
INNER JOIN (
SELECT continent, country, business, year_founded
FROM countries JOIN businesses USING(country_code)
) sub ON sub_group.continent = sub.continent AND sub_group.year_founded = sub.year_founded
ORDER BY sub.year_founded ASC-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
SELECT sub_old_business.continent, sub_old_business.countries_without_businesses
FROM (
SELECT COUNT(c.country) AS countries_without_businesses, c.continent
FROM countries c LEFT JOIN businesses b USING(country_code)
WHERE b.* IS NULL
GROUP BY continent
) sub_old_business JOIN (
SELECT COUNT(c.country) AS countries_without_businesses, c.continent
FROM countries c LEFT JOIN new_businesses nb USING(country_code)
WHERE nb.* IS NULL
GROUP BY continent
) sub_new_businesses ON sub_old_business.continent = sub_new_businesses.continent
ORDER BY continent ASC-- Which business categories are best suited to last over the course of centuries?
-- That means to take the business categories that have the longest duration (gap difference between current year and year founded and order
-- oldest founding year for each continent and category
SELECT co.continent, ca.category, MIN(b.year_founded) as year_founded
FROM businesses b
INNER JOIN categories ca ON b.category_code = ca.category_code
INNER JOIN countries co ON co.country_code = b.country_code
GROUP BY co.continent, ca.category
ORDER BY year_founded ASC