I should add that, because OrderStatusID is the clustered primary key, which is why I opted to use it for my sort (MAX(OrderStatusID)) and join.

Can you use the RANK() function? Something like...

SELECT A.Key, A.Date, A.Status, A.Ranking

FROM (SELECT Key, Date, Status

, RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY Key ORDER BY Date DESC) AS Ranking

FROM table) A

WHERE A.Ranking <=...

Koen, You had me until script component. Once you got there, it didn't feel any more graceful than doing it inside the stored procedure. Oh, well. Thanks for putting the...

I confused things a little by typing the result set wrong. I expected:

ABCDEF

ABCABC

DEFDEF

and got:

ABCDEF

ABCABC

ABCDEF

DEFDEF

In other words, (ABC, DEF) got doubled up. But the responses from Steve and Celko gave me...