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Project: Uncovering the World's Oldest Businesses

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
DataFrameavailable as
df
variable
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;
Spinner
DataFrameavailable as
oldest_business_continent
variable
-- 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;
Spinner
DataFrameavailable as
count_missing
variable
-- 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; 
Spinner
DataFrameavailable as
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
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;