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?
WITH continents AS
(
SELECT
c.continent as continent,
c.country as country,
b.business as business,
b.year_founded as year_founded,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY c.continent ORDER BY b.year_founded ASC) as rank
FROM countries as c
JOIN businesses as b
ON c.country_code = b.country_code
)
SELECT
continent,
country,
business,
year_founded
FROM continents
WHERE rank = 1;-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
WITH combined_businesses AS (
SELECT country_code FROM businesses
UNION
SELECT country_code FROM new_businesses
),
missing_data AS (
SELECT
c.continent,
c.country
FROM countries c
LEFT JOIN combined_businesses cb
ON c.country_code = cb.country_code
WHERE cb.country_code IS NULL
)
SELECT
continent,
COUNT(country) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM missing_data
GROUP BY continent
ORDER BY continent;-- Which business categories are best suited to last over the course of centuries?
WITH ranked_businesses AS (
SELECT
c.continent,
cat.category,
b.year_founded,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
PARTITION BY c.continent, cat.category
ORDER BY b.year_founded ASC
) AS row_num
FROM businesses b
INNER JOIN categories cat ON b.category_code = cat.category_code
INNER JOIN countries c ON b.country_code = c.country_code
)
SELECT
continent,
category,
year_founded
FROM ranked_businesses
WHERE row_num = 1;
SELECT * FROM public.businesses