time series query

The problem I'm trying to solve is pretty standard. I have a table that
records measurements of different types at different times.

CREATE TABLE measurements (
obj_id int4,
val_type_id int4 references lu_val_type(val_type_id),
val numeric,
observation_date date
);

I want a query as simple and fast as possible to return the latest
observation of each type for each object.
I sent a message to this list a while ago, and the suggestion I found to
be the best compromise of clarity and speed was:
a) create an index on (obj_id, val_type_id, observation_date)
b) the "obvious" query becomes fast thanks to the index.
select ms.*
from (
select obj_id, val_type_id, max(observation_date) as
observation_date
from measurements
group by obj_id, val_type_id
) ms_last
join measurements ms using (obj_id, val_type_id, observation_date);

It still bugged me a bit that this requires a JOIN, especially since in
a procedural language, it would have been so easy to return the value
associated with the max(observation_date).
I think I've found a pretty good alternative. This at the moment works
if we keep track of time with an integer, rather than a date, but it
would be readily extensible.

The idea is to in fact, associate the value with the
max(observation_date) like so:
select obj_id, val_type_id, max(array[observation_date, val])
group by obj_id, val_type_id;

There are two caveats:
a) array requires elements to be of the same type, so observation_type
must be kept as "time from"
b) a row constructor would be ideal here, but there is now max function
for rowtypes.

If I did have a max() function for row types, it would be clean to do this:
select obj_id, val_type_id, max(row(observation_date, val))
group by obj_id, val_type_id;

Now, it seems that since rowtype comparison is built in, it should be
pretty easy to build a max() aggregate for it. Has anybody done this?
I'd have looked at the code for max(anyarray) but I don't know how to
access it. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Also, has someone thought about this before? I'm wondering if there will
be a speed gain coming from this.

Thank you,
Jaime

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