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The Earliest Signal

easySQLAggregationDates

Kindled switched on its tracking part-way through building the shop, and nobody wrote down when. Every report that says 'since launch' is quietly claiming a start date, so before publishing anything the growth lead wants the real one: the day of the oldest action anywhere in the table.

events — one row per tracked action. user_id points at a row in users. event_type is one of signup, view_product, add_to_cart and purchase. event_date is the day the action happened. Nothing guarantees a person produces all four kinds, or any particular number of rows.

id user_id event_type event_date
1 1 signup 2023-05-01
2 1 view_product 2023-05-01
3 1 add_to_cart 2023-05-02
4 1 purchase 2023-05-03
5 2 signup 2023-05-02
6 2 view_product 2023-05-02
7 3 signup 2023-05-03
8 3 view_product 2023-05-03
9 3 add_to_cart 2023-05-04
10 4 signup 2023-05-04
11 4 view_product 2023-05-05
12 4 add_to_cart 2023-05-05
13 4 purchase 2023-05-06
14 5 signup 2023-05-05
15 6 signup 2023-05-06
16 6 view_product 2023-05-06
17 7 signup 2023-05-07
18 7 view_product 2023-05-07
19 7 add_to_cart 2023-05-08
20 7 purchase 2023-05-09
21 8 signup 2023-05-08

The table already exists in the database — there is nothing to create or load.

Task: Write a query that returns one row and one column, first_event, holding the earliest event_date in the table.

Example output — the shape, on an invented date. One row, one column, the date exactly as stored:

first_event
2022-11-03

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