Sort in non-alpabetical order in postgresql - postgresql

I'm automating a process at work where the output needs to be in a certain non-alphabetical order depending on a name (internal_product, type text) in addition to a number (type text). First I'm running a subquery where I collect information from four slightly different tables using joins. I then append the result with a union before the outer group by sums units and amounts. The pseudo-query is as follows:
select name, number, internal_product, sum(units), sum(amount) from (
select fields, sum(x)
from t1
join join-conditions
join join-conditions
group by name, number, internal_product
union
.....
select fields, sum(x)
from t5
join join-conditions
join join-conditions
group by name, number, internal_product
) as foo
group by name, number, internal_product
order by number, name;
I tried to change a column in a helper table used in one of the joins to an enum type since it is used in the outer group by (SO-thread) but the column type of course needs to be the same in the join-condition so the modified query was not valid. There are 30 product names so I would like to avoid using a CASE name as suggested by gbn and Guffa.
Are there other ways to apply a certain order in a order by?

It might be overkill or complicated for your case, but you could create a custom collation in postgres to sort the way you want. Have a look at the documentation.
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/collation.html

Related

How to limit to just one result per condition when looking through multiple OR/IN conditions in the WHERE clause (Postgresql)

For Example:
SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE Country IN ('Germany', 'France', 'UK')
I want to LIMIT 1 for each of the countries in my IN clause so I only see a total of 3 rows: One customer for per country (1 German, 1 France, 1 UK). Is there a simple way to do that?
Normally, a simple GROUP BY would suffice for this type of solution, however as you have specified that you want to include ALL of the columns in the result, then we can use the ROW_NUMBER() window function to provide a value to filter on.
As a general rule it is important to specify the column to sort on (ORDER BY) for all windowing or paged queries to make the result repeatable.
As no schema has been supplied, I have used Name as the field to sort on for the window, please update that (or the question) with any other field you would like, the PK is a good candidate if you have nothing else to go on.
SELECT * FROM
(
SELECT *
, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY Country ORDER BY Name) AS _rn
FROM Customers
WHERE Country IN ('Germany', 'France', 'UK')
)
WHERE _rn = 1
The PARTITION BY forces the ROW_NUMBER to be counted across all records with the same Country value, starting at 1, so in this case we only select the rows that get a row number (aliased as _rn) of 1.
The WHERE clause could have been in the outer query if you really want to, but ROW_NUMBER() can only be specified in the SELECT or ORDER BY clauses of the query, so to use it as a filter criteria we are forced to wrap the results in some way.

Getting group by attribute in nested query

I am trying to find the most frequent value in a postgresql table. The problem is that I also want to "group by" in that table and only get the most frequent from the values that have the same name.
So I have the following query:
select name,
(SELECT value FROM table where name=name GROUP BY value ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC limit 1)
as mfq from table group by name;
So, I am using where name=name, trying to get the outside group by attribute "name", but it doesn't seem to work. Any ideas on how to do it?
Edit: for example in the following table:
name value
a 3
a 3
a 3
b 2
b 2
I want to get:
name value
a 3
b 2
but the above statement gives:
name value
a 3
b 3
instead, since where doesn't work correctly.
There is a dedicated function in PostgreSQL for this case: the mode() ordered-set aggregate:
select name, mode() within group (order by value) mode_value
from table
group by name;
which returns the most frequent input value (arbitrarily choosing the first one if there are multiple equally-frequent results) -- which is the same behavior as with your order by count(*) desc limit 1.
It is available from PostgreSQL 9.4+.
http://rextester.com/GHGJH15037
If you want your query to work, you need table aliases. Table aliases and qualified column names are always a good idea:
select t.name,
(select t2.value
from table t2
where t2.name = t.name
group by t2.value
order by COUNT(*) desc
limit 1
) as mfq
from table t
group by t.name;

Inner join with count and group by

I have 2 tables
Timetable :
pupil_id, staff_id, subject, lesson_id
Staff_info :
staff_id, surname
The timetable table contains 1000s of rows because each student's ID is listed under each period they do.
I want to list all the teacher's names, and the number of lessons they do (count). So I have to do SELECT with DISTINCT.
SELECT DISTINCT TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID,
COUNT(TIMETABLE.LESSON_ID),
STAFF.SURNAME
FROM STAFF
INNER JOIN TIMETABLE ON TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID = STAFF.STAFF_ID
GROUP BY TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID
However I get the error:
Column 'STAFF.SURNAME' is invalid in the select list because it is not
contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.
This should do what you want:
SELECT s.STAFF_ID, COUNT(tt.LESSON_ID),
s.SURNAME
FROM STAFF s INNER JOIN
TIMETABLE tt
ON tt.STAFF_ID = s.STAFF_ID
GROUP BY s.STAFF_ID, s.SURNAME;
Notes:
You don't need DISTINCT unless there are duplicates in either table. That seems unlikely with this data structure, but if a staff member could have two of the same lesson, you would use COUNT(DISTINCT tt.LESSON_ID).
Table aliases make the query easier to write and to read.
You should include STAFF.SURNAME in the GROUP BY as well as the id.
I have a preference for taking the STAFF_ID column from the table where it is the primary key.
If you wanted staff with no lessons, you would change the INNER JOIN to LEFT JOIN.
SELECT T.STAFF_ID,
T.CNT,
S.SURNAME
FROM STAFF S
JOIN (
SELECT STAFF_ID, CNT = COUNT(/*DISTINCT*/ LESSON_ID)
FROM TIMETABLE
GROUP BY STAFF_ID
) T ON T.STAFF_ID = S.STAFF_ID
Another option:
SELECT DISTINCT si.staff_id, surname, COUNT(lesson_id) OVER(PARTITION BY staff_Id)
FROM Staff_info si
INNER JOIN Timetable tt ON si.staff_id = tt.staff_id
When using Aggregate function(Count, Sum, Min, Max, Avg) in the Select column's list, any other columns that are in the Select column's list but not in a aggregate function, should be mentioned in GROUP BY section too. So you need to change your query as follow and add STAFF.SURNAME to GROUP BY section too:
SELECT TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID,
COUNT(TIMETABLE.LESSON_ID),
STAFF.SURNAME
FROM STAFF
INNER JOIN TIMETABLE ON TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID = STAFF.STAFF_ID
GROUP BY TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID,STAFF.SURNAME
Distinct is useless also in your scenario. and also as you are going to show the teachers name and Count lessons, you do not need to add TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID to Select's column's list,, but it should remain in Group By section to prevent duplicate names.
SELECT COUNT(TIMETABLE.LESSON_ID),
STAFF.SURNAME
FROM STAFF
INNER JOIN TIMETABLE ON TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID = STAFF.STAFF_ID
GROUP BY TIMETABLE.STAFF_ID,STAFF.SURNAME
You may need to take a look at this W3C post for more info

Postgres: Distinct but only for one column

I have a table on pgsql with names (having more than 1 mio. rows), but I have also many duplicates. I select 3 fields: id, name, metadata.
I want to select them randomly with ORDER BY RANDOM() and LIMIT 1000, so I do this is many steps to save some memory in my PHP script.
But how can I do that so it only gives me a list having no duplicates in names.
For example [1,"Michael Fox","2003-03-03,34,M,4545"] will be returned but not [2,"Michael Fox","1989-02-23,M,5633"]. The name field is the most important and must be unique in the list everytime I do the select and it must be random.
I tried with GROUP BY name, bu then it expects me to have id and metadata in the GROUP BY as well or in a aggragate function, but I dont want to have them somehow filtered.
Anyone knows how to fetch many columns but do only a distinct on one column?
To do a distinct on only one (or n) column(s):
select distinct on (name)
name, col1, col2
from names
This will return any of the rows containing the name. If you want to control which of the rows will be returned you need to order:
select distinct on (name)
name, col1, col2
from names
order by name, col1
Will return the first row when ordered by col1.
distinct on:
SELECT DISTINCT ON ( expression [, ...] ) keeps only the first row of each set of rows where the given expressions evaluate to equal. The DISTINCT ON expressions are interpreted using the same rules as for ORDER BY (see above). Note that the “first row” of each set is unpredictable unless ORDER BY is used to ensure that the desired row appears first.
The DISTINCT ON expression(s) must match the leftmost ORDER BY expression(s). The ORDER BY clause will normally contain additional expression(s) that determine the desired precedence of rows within each DISTINCT ON group.
Anyone knows how to fetch many columns but do only a distinct on one column?
You want the DISTINCT ON clause.
You didn't provide sample data or a complete query so I don't have anything to show you. You want to write something like:
SELECT DISTINCT ON (name) fields, id, name, metadata FROM the_table;
This will return an unpredictable (but not "random") set of rows. If you want to make it predictable add an ORDER BY per Clodaldo's answer. If you want to make it truly random, you'll want to ORDER BY random().
To do a distinct on n columns:
select distinct on (col1, col2) col1, col2, col3, col4 from names
SELECT NAME,MAX(ID) as ID,MAX(METADATA) as METADATA
from SOMETABLE
GROUP BY NAME

Calculate Mode - "Highest frequency row" DB2

What would be the most efficient way to calculating the mode across tables with joins in DB2..
I am trying to get the value with the most frequency(count) for a given column(ID - candidate key for joined table) on a given date.
The idea is to get the most common (value) from the table which has different (value)s for some accounts (for the same ID and date). We need to make it unique for use in another table.
You can use common table expressions [CTE's], indicated by WITH, to break the logic down into logical steps. First we'll build the summary rows, then we'll assign a ranking to the rows within each group, then pick out the ones that with the highest count of records.
Let's say we want to know which flavor of each item sells the most frequently on each date (perhaps assuming a record is quantity one).
WITH s as
(
SELECT itemID, saleDate, flavor, count(*) as tally
FROM sales
GROUP BY itemID, saleDate, flavor
), r as
(
SELECT itemID, saleDate, flavor, tally,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY itemID, saleDate ORDER BY tally desc) as pri
FROM s
)
SELECT itemID, saleDate, flavor, tally
FROM r
WHERE pri = 1
Here the names "s" and "r" refer to the result set from their respective CTE's. These names can then be used as to represent a table in another part of the statement.
The pri column will have the RANK() of tally value on the summary row from the first section "s" within the window of itemID and saleDate. Tally is descending, because we want the largest value first, which will get a RANK() of 1. Then in the main SELECT we simply pick those summary records which were first in their partition.
By using RANK() or DENSE_RANK() we could get back multiple flavors for an itemID, saleDate, if they are tied for first place. This could be eliminated by replacing RANK() with ROW_NUMBER(), but it would arbitrarily pick one of the tied flavors as a winner, and this may not be correct answer for the problem at hand.
If we had a sales quantity column in the table, we could replace COUNT(*) with SUM(salesqty) and find what had sold the most units.