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) |
SELECT
c.continent,
c.country,
b.business,
b.year_founded
FROM
businesses b
JOIN
countries c ON b.country_code = c.country_code
WHERE
(c.continent, b.year_founded) IN (
SELECT
c2.continent,
MIN(b2.year_founded)
FROM
businesses b2
JOIN
countries c2 ON b2.country_code = c2.country_code
GROUP BY
c2.continent
)-- How many countries per continent lack data on the oldest businesses
-- Does including the `new_businesses` data change this?
select c.continent ,
FROM businesses as b1
UNION ALL new_businesses as b2
-- Which business categories are best suited to last over the course of centuries?