help in getting results from mysql

I have to get some results from a mysql table, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not doing it the best way. its like this... I have a table (a historical one) with these fields: date | item_id | item_type_id | qty | value and there are multiple lines for the pair item/type (as I said it's a historical table). I want the row with the last date. So if I had: 2001-29-6 | 34 | 3 | 5 | 15.0 2001-30-6 | 34 | 3 | 7 | 13.0 2001-1-7 | 34 | 3 | 9 | 12.0 2001-2-7 | 34 | 3 | 1 | 3.5 I only want the last one '2001-2-7'. But I can't think of a way of doing this without sub-select. So I did this: <pre> $rs1=mysql_query("select max(date) from tablename where item_id=34 and item_type_id=3"); $last_date=mysql_result($rs1,0,0); $rs2=mysql_query("select qty,value from tablename where date='$last_date'"); list($qty,$value) = mysql_fetch_row($rs2); </pre> it works fine... but I don't think it is good... whenever there is 'code' between queries to get results I think something could be optimized. Any ideas? ____________________________ . Christian Dechery (lemming) . http://www.tanamesa.com.br . Gaita-L Owner / Web Developer