Get max date for each year from list of dates Need to get max date for each year from list of arbitrary dates:

date         year
=================
1/10/2013    2013
3/26/2013    2013
4/20/2012    2012
9/10/2012    2012
5/6/2011     2011


So with a working query, using the above data, the correct result would be:

maxdate     year
=================
3/26/2013    2013
9/10/2012    2012
5/6/2011     2011


Our database is proprietary, supporting only ANSI-SQL, no fancy extensions. 
Tried using group_by, but it's retrieving all dates for each year, not what I want.
It is possible that I am missing something, but you should be able to get the result easily using the max() aggregate and a GROUP BY:

select
  max(date) maxdate,
  year
from yourtable
group by year;


See SQL Fiddle with Demo