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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
DataFrameas
oldest_business_continent
variable
-- What is the oldest business on each continent?
WITH businessess AS 
(SELECT *
FROM public.businesses
UNION 
SELECT *
FROM
public.new_businesses),

rank_table AS 
	(SELECT  continent,
	    country,
	    business,
	    year_founded,
	    ROW_NUMBER()OVER (PARTITION BY continent ORDER BY year_founded) AS rank
FROM businessess b
INNER JOIN public.countries co
USING (country_code) 
INNER JOIN public.categories ca
USING (category_code))

SELECT continent, country, business, year_founded
FROM rank_table
WHERE rank = 1;
Spinner
DataFrameas
count_missing
variable
WITH businessess AS 
(SELECT *
FROM public.businesses
UNION 
SELECT *
FROM
public.new_businesses),

rank_table AS 
	(SELECT  continent,
	    country,
	    business,
	    year_founded,
	    ROW_NUMBER()OVER (PARTITION BY continent ORDER BY year_founded) AS rank
FROM businessess b
FULL JOIN public.countries co
USING (country_code))
	
SELECT continent,
	   COUNT(distinct country) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM rank_table
WHERE business IS NULL
GROUP BY continent;
Spinner
DataFrameas
oldest_by_continent_category
variable
WITH businessess AS (
    SELECT *
    FROM public.businesses
),
rank_table AS (
    SELECT 
        co.continent,
        ca.category,
        b.year_founded
    FROM businessess b
    INNER JOIN public.countries co
        ON b.country_code = co.country_code
    INNER JOIN public.categories ca
        ON b.category_code = ca.category_code
)
SELECT 
    continent, 
    category, 
    MIN(year_founded) AS year_founded
FROM rank_table
GROUP BY continent, category
ORDER BY continent, category;