title: Model to identify top 1 child of a one to many relationship
body: <p>Are there any elegant DB model design patterns for identifying the most recent child in a one to many relationship?</p>
  
  <p>Given a vanilla parent/child model, you can accomplish via TSQL. However, I wanted to find an efficient method that does not require looking through many rows or index ordering.</p>
  
  <p>This example design stores the most recent child ID in the parent. It seems to be a poor design since you could have contention for updating "Top Child ID". </p>
  
  <h2>Parent Table</h2>
  
  <p>-Parent ID</p>
  
  <p>-Top Child ID</p>
  
  <h2>Child Table</h2>
  
  <p>-Child ID</p>
  
  <p>-Parent ID</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have a clever or elegant solution?</p>