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 ranked_businesses AS (
SELECT
c.continent,
c.country,
b.business,
b.year_founded,
RANK() OVER (
PARTITION BY c.continent
ORDER BY b.year_founded ASC
) AS rnk
FROM businesses b
JOIN countries c
ON b.country_code = c.country_code
)
SELECT
continent,
country,
business,
year_founded
FROM ranked_businesses
WHERE rnk = 1;
-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
WITH all_business_countries AS (
SELECT country_code FROM businesses
UNION
SELECT country_code FROM new_businesses
),
countries_with_business AS (
SELECT DISTINCT
c.continent,
c.country_code
FROM countries c
JOIN all_business_countries b
ON c.country_code = b.country_code
),
total_countries AS (
SELECT
continent,
COUNT(*) AS total
FROM countries
GROUP BY continent
),
covered_countries AS (
SELECT
continent,
COUNT(*) AS covered
FROM countries_with_business
GROUP BY continent
)
SELECT
t.continent,
(t.total - COALESCE(c.covered, 0)) AS countries_without_businesses
FROM total_countries t
LEFT JOIN covered_countries c
ON t.continent = c.continent;
-- Which business categories are best suited to last over the course of centuries?
SELECT
c.continent,
cat.category,
MIN(b.year_founded) AS year_founded
FROM businesses b
JOIN countries c
ON b.country_code = c.country_code
JOIN categories cat
ON b.category_code = cat.category_code
GROUP BY
c.continent,
cat.category
ORDER BY
c.continent,
cat.category;