You can achieve this using CTEs and recursive querying (if your database system supports it).
There is a SQL Server example here and a Postgres example here.
Question
So I have a database where each record has a reference to a parent record in the same table (possibly null). Each record also has an 'active' flag that describes whether the single record is currently active.
I would like to end up with a flat list of records that have the following traits:
Instead of constructing the tree and doing a search to filter out the records I would like to accomplish this in SQL. Is there a way to join or aggregate to filter out the undesired records?
No correct solution