Please explain the functionality of select max(...) ... group by in sql - mysql

Question

I appreciate that this may appear to many as a dum question but I cannot find a clear explanation anywhere as to what the effect of "group by" has on a select max(...) from SQL statement.
I have the following data (there is another column image of type mediumblob which is not shown):
id title test_id
1 bomb 0
2 Soft watch 2
3 Dali 1
4 Narciss 1
5 The Woman In Green 0
6 A summer in Vetheuil 0
7 Artist's Garden 2
8 Beech Forest 2
9 Claude Monet 0
I know if I perform
select max(id) from images
where image is not null;
I get the max value of id i.e.:
max(id)
9
However can someone please explain what is happening when I perform
select max(id), title, test_id
from images
where image is not null
group by id;
I find that the max(id) serves no useful purpose (results shown below)?
max(id) title test_id
1 bomb 0
2 Soft watch 2
3 Dali 1
4 Narciss 1
5 The Woman In Green 0
6 A summer in Vetheuil 0
7 Artist's Garden 2
8 Beech Forest 2
9 Claude Monet 0

Answer 1

In the case of using MAX() the GROUP BY clause essentially tells the query engine how to group the items from which to determine a maximum. In your first example you were selecting only a single column, so there was no need for grouping. But in your second example you had multiple columns. So you need to tell the query engine how to determine which ones are going to be compared to find a maximum.
You told it to group by the id column. Which means that it's going to compare records which have the same id and give you the maximum one for each unique id. Since every record has a different id, you essentially didn't do anything with that clause.
It grouped all records with an id of 1 (which was a single record), and returned the record with the maximum id from that group (which was that record). It did the same for 2, 3, etc.
In the case of the three columns shown here, the only place where it would make sense to group your records would be on the test_id column. Something like this:
SELECT MAX(id), title, test_id
FROM images
WHERE image IS NOT null
GROUP BY test_id
This would group them by the test_id, so the results will include records 6 (the maximum id for test_id 0), 4 (the maximum id for test_id 1), and 8 (the maximum id for test_id 2). By splitting the records into those three groups based on the three unique values in the test_id column, it can effectively find a "maximum" id within each group.

Answer 2

Yes, in your example it serves no useful purpose.
You're grouping by ID then finding the maximum ID. But that doesn't make sense since there's only one of each ID. Normally MAX() is used on quantities, like prices or item counts or such like.

Answer 3

Group by is not used for this kind of queries
Its is used for queries like this
OId OrderDate OrderPrice Customer
1 2008/11/12 1000 Hansen
2 2008/10/23 1600 Nilsen
3 2008/09/02 700 Hansen
4 2008/09/03 300 Hansen
5 2008/08/30 2000 Jensen
6 2008/10/04 100 Nilsen
Now if you want to get sum of material bought by each customer of these you will use group by
SELECT Customer,SUM(OrderPrice) FROM Orders
GROUP BY Customer
customer SUM(OrderPrice)
Hansen 2000
Nilsen 1700
Jensen 2000
In above case id is unique so group by id will not make any sense