A table was created like

create table Test(ITEM varchar(20) not null primary key, VAL
varchar(20));

It is filled by records like

(aaa_20111215, ...)
(aaa_20111215, ...)
(aaa_20111201, ...)
...

My question is how to select the record having the latest date for ITEM?

The answer for the above records is (aaa_20111215, ...).

Please write a sql to do this.

thx