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 co.continent, Min(co.country) as country, Min(ca.category) as business,
MIN(b.year_founded) as year_founded
FROM countries as co
LEFT JOIN businesses as b
ON co.country_code = b.country_code
LEFT JOIN categories as ca
ON b.category_code = ca.category_code
WHERE b.year_founded IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY co.continent
ORDER BY year_founded ASC;-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
WITH all_businesses AS (
SELECT country_code
FROM businesses
UNION
SELECT country_code
FROM new_businesses
)
SELECT
c.continent,
COUNT(DISTINCT c.country_code) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM countries c
LEFT JOIN all_businesses ab ON c.country_code = ab.country_code
WHERE ab.country_code IS NULL
GROUP BY c.continent;WITH ages AS (
SELECT
ca.category,
(EXTRACT(YEAR FROM CURRENT_DATE)::int - b.year_founded) AS age
FROM businesses b
JOIN categories ca ON ca.category_code = b.category_code
WHERE b.year_founded IS NOT NULL
),
per_category AS (
SELECT
category,
PERCENTILE_CONT(0.9) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY age) AS p90_age,
AVG( (age >= 200)::int ) AS share_200y,
MAX(age) AS max_age,
COUNT(*) AS n_businesses
FROM ages
GROUP BY category
),
ranked AS (
SELECT
*,
RANK() OVER (ORDER BY p90_age DESC) AS r_p90,
RANK() OVER (ORDER BY share_200y DESC) AS r_share200,
RANK() OVER (ORDER BY max_age DESC) AS r_max
FROM per_category
),
scored AS (
SELECT
category,
p90_age, share_200y, max_age,
(r_p90 + r_share200 + r_max) / 3.0 AS avg_rank
FROM ranked
)
SELECT
category,
(EXTRACT(YEAR FROM CURRENT_DATE)::int - max_age) AS oldest_year
FROM scored
ORDER BY oldest_year ASC
LIMIT 15;