Set a global alias for a table and a column? - firebird

I'm working with a huge Firebird database where tables have completely unreadable names like WTF$RANDOM_ABBREVIATION_6792 or RPG$RANDOM_ABBREVIATION_5462 where columns have names like "rid9312", "1NUM5", "2NUM4", "RNAME8".
I need to set them global aliases to be able to use them as a full-length table names like Document and column names like
Document.CreationDate instead of xecblob.DDATE4
or
TempDoc.MovingOrderID instead of TMP$LINKED_DOC_6101.DID6101
Altering the database, or a table, or a column might be a big problem because the records might be counted by millions and tens of millions, and more over that, a major part of the Delphi-written front-end for the database is bound to the table names and column names.
Is there a way to do that somehow?

The closest thing there is to a "global alias" is to create views. For example:
create view document
as
select
DDATE4 as creationdate
-- , other columns...
from xecblob;
or
create view document (creationdate /*, other column aliases... */)
as
select
DDATE4
-- , other columns...
from xecblob;
(personally, I find the first variant more readable)
This does require altering the database, but there is no real cost associated with that (it doesn't matter if the table contains no, one, thousands or millions of records).

Related

How to backup whole table into a single field item?

I have few very small tables (a total of ~1000 rows) that I want to backup regularly into the same DB, to a single table. I know it sounds weird but hear me out.
Let's say that the tables I want to backup are named linux_commands, and windows_commands. These two tables have roughly: id (pkey), name, definition, config (jsonb), commands.
I want to back these up everyday into a table called commands_backup and I want this new table to have a date field, a field for windows_commands, and another one for linux_commands, so three columns in total. Each day, a script would run and write current date to date field, and then fetch whole linux_commands table and write it to related field in a single row, then do the same for windows_commands.
How would you setup something like this? Also, what is the best data type for storing whole data set in a single item?
In the target table, windows_commands and linux_commands should be type jsonb.
Then you can use:
INSERT INTO commands_backup VALUES (
current_date,
(SELECT jsonb_agg(to_jsonb(linux_commands)) FROM linux_commands),
(SELECT jsonb_agg(to_jsonb(windows_commands)) FROM windows_commands)
);

Best performance method for getting records by large collection of IDs

I am writing a query with code to select all records from a table where a column value is contained in a CSV. I found a suggestion that the best way to do this was using ARRAY functionality in PostgresQL.
I have a table price_mapping and it has a primary key of id and a column customer_id of type bigint.
I want to return all records that have a customer ID in the array I will generate from csv.
I tried this:
select * from price_mapping
where ARRAY[customer_id] <# ARRAY[5,7,10]::bigint[]
(the 5,7,10 part would actually be a csv inserted by my app)
But I am not sure that is right. In application the array could contain 10's of thousands of IDs so want to make sure I am doing right with best performance method.
Is this the right way in PostgreSQL to retrieve large collection of records by pre-defined column value?
Thanks
Generally this is done with the SQL standard in operator.
select *
from price_mapping
where customer_id in (5,7,10)
I don't see any reason using ARRAY would be faster. It might be slower given it has to build arrays, though it might have been optimized.
In the past this was more optimal:
select *
from price_mapping
where customer_id = ANY(VALUES (5), (7), (10)
But new-ish versions of Postgres should optimize this for you.
Passing in tens of thousands of IDs might run up against a query size limit either in Postgres or your database driver, so you may wish to batch this a few thousand at a time.
As for the best performance, the answer is to not search for tens of thousands of IDs. Find something which relates them together, index that column, and search by that.
If your data is big enough, try this:
Read your CSV using a FDW (foreign data wrapper)
If you need this connection often, you might build a materialized view from it, holding only needed columns. Refresh this when new CSV is created.
Join your table against this foreign table or materialized viev.

select all columns except two in q kdb historical database

In output I want to select all columns except two columns from a table in q/kdb historical database.
I tried running below query but it does not work on hdb.
delete colid,coltime from table where date=.z.d-1
but it is failing with below error
ERROR: 'par
(trying to update a physically partitioned table)
I referred https://code.kx.com/wiki/Cookbook/ProgrammingIdioms#How_do_I_select_all_the_columns_of_a_table_except_one.3F but no help.
How can we display all columns except for two in kdb historical database?
The reason you are getting par error is due to the fact that it is a partitioned table.
The error is documented here
trying to update a partitioned table
You cannot directly update, delete anything on a partitioned table ( there is a separate db maintenance script for that)
The query you have used as fix is basically selecting the data first in-memory (temporarily) and then deleting the columns, hence it is working.
delete colid,coltime from select from table where date=.z.d-1
You can try the following functional form :
c:cols[t] except `p
?[t;enlist(=;`date;2015.01.01) ;0b;c!c]
Could try a functional select:
?[table;enlist(=;`date;.z.d);0b;{x!x}cols[table]except`colid`coltime]
Here the last argument is a dictionary of column name to column title, which tells the query what to extract. Instead of deleting the columns you specified this selects all but those two, which is the same query more or less.
To see what the functional form of a query is you can run something like:
parse"select colid,coltime from table where date=.z.d"
And it will output the arguments to the functional select.
You can read more on functional selects at code.kx.com.
Only select queries work on partitioned tables, which you resolved by structuring your query where you first selected the table into memory, then deleted the columns you did not want.
If you have a large number of columns and don't want to create a bulky select query you could use a functional select.
?[table;();0b;{x!x}((cols table) except `colid`coltime)]
And show all columns except a subset of columns. The column clause expects a dictionary hence I am using the function {x!x} to convert my list to a dictionary. See more information here
https://code.kx.com/q/ref/funsql/
As nyi mentioned, if you want to permanently delete columns from an historical database you can use the deleteCol function in the dbmaint tools https://github.com/KxSystems/kdb/blob/master/utils/dbmaint.md

Getting a list of a table's attributes that are sortable sorted by uniqueness

I frequently use pg_dump to dump databases and compare them with diff. To get rid of most "false positives", I'd like to patch pg_dump to sort the table so that its dumped order isn't changed more than necessary by insertions & Co.
So I'm looking for a query that will return a list of a table's attributes that are sortable (e. g. no XML fields) and sorted by "uniqueness", i. e. first attributes representing the primary key, then other unique keys, then the rest.
Before I dive into the depths of PostgreSQL's system catalogues, has anyone already solved this problem?
You could write a bunch of queries like:
COPY (SELECT * FROM T ORDER BY ...) INTO t.csv
and write the result set of each table into a csv file. It will be written in the set ordering, so should be easily compared.
This is much easier than hacking pg_dump.
All the columns of a table you can get by using the standard INFORMATION_SCHEMA:
select * from information_schema.columns;

Optimize getting counts of rows grouped by first letter in SQLite?

My current query looks something like this:
SELECT SUBSTR(name,1,1), COUNT(*) FROM files GROUP BY SUBSTR(name,1,1)
But it's taking a pretty long time just to do counts on a table that's already indexed by the name column. I saw from this question that some engines might not use indexes correctly for the SUBSTR function, and in fact, sqlite will not use indexes for SUBSTR(string,1,1).
Is there any other approach that would utilize the index and net me some faster queries?
One strategy that is consistent with your access pattern is to add a new indexed column "first_letter" to your table. Use a trigger on to set the value on insert and update. Then your query is a simple group by first_letter.
Another strategy is to create a shadow table which contains an aggregation of the mother table. This isn't easy because it is your job as developer to keep the shadow table consistent with the mother table. Every delete, update or insert in table files needs to be accompanied by a change in the shadow table.
Databases like Oracle have support for materialized views to achieve this automatically but sqlite doesn't.