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) |
EXPLAIN ANALYZE
SELECT bc.continent, bc.business, bc.year_founded, bc.country
FROM (
SELECT business, year_founded, country, continent
FROM businesses
JOIN countries USING (country_code)
) bc
JOIN (SELECT continent, MIN(year_founded) AS year_founded
FROM businesses
JOIN countries
USING (country_code)
GROUP BY continent
) c
ON bc.continent = c.continent AND bc.year_founded = c.year_founded;
-- What is the oldest business on each continent?
EXPLAIN ANALYZE
WITH cte AS (
SELECT
continent,
country,
business,
year_founded,
RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY continent ORDER BY year_founded ASC) AS earliest_business
FROM
businesses
JOIN
countries
ON
businesses.country_code = countries.country_code)
SELECT
continent,
country,
business,
year_founded
FROM
cte
WHERE
earliest_business = 1;
-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
-- SELECT * FROM new_businesses LIMIT 3;
WITH cte AS (
SELECT * FROM businesses
UNION
SELECT * FROM new_businesses)
SELECT
continent,
COUNT(DISTINCT country) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM
countries
LEFT JOIN
cte
USING(country_code)
WHERE
business IS NULL
GROUP BY
continent;
-- Which business categories are best suited to last over the course of centuries?
SELECT
continent,
category,
MIN(year_founded) AS year_founded
FROM
countries
JOIN
businesses
ON countries.country_code = businesses.country_code
JOIN
categories
ON categories.category_code = businesses.category_code
GROUP BY
continent, category
ORDER BY
continent, category;