I need to select the count of unique value combinations of column B in an XRef table which is grouped by column A.
Consider the following schema and data, which represents a simple family structure. Each child has a father and mother:
TABLE Father
FatherID
Name
1
Alex
2
Bob
TABLE Mother
MotherID
Name
1
Alice
2
Barbara
TABLE Child
ChildID
FatherID
MotherID
Name
1
1 (Alex)
1 (Alice)
Adam
2
1 (Alex)
1 (Alice)
Billy
3
1 (Alex)
2 (Barbara)
Celine
4
2 (Bob)
2 (Barbara)
Derek
The distinct combinations of mothers for each father are:
Alex (Alice, Barbara)
Bob (Barbara)
In all there are two distinct combinations of mothers:
Alice, Barbara
Barbara
The query I want to write would return the count of those distinct combinations of mother, regardless of which father they are associated with:
UniqueMotherGroups
2
I was able to do this successfully using the STRING_AGG function, but it feels clunky. It also needs to operate over millions of rows and is quite slow at the moment. Is there a more idiomatic way to do this with set operations instead?
Here is my working example:
-- Drop pre-existing tables
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Child;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Father;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Mother;
-- Create family tables.
CREATE TABLE dbo.Father
(
FatherID INT NOT NULL
, Name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Father
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Father
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (FatherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Father SET (LOCK_ESCALATION = TABLE);
CREATE TABLE dbo.Mother
(
MotherID INT NOT NULL
, Name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Mother
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Mother
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (MotherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Mother SET (LOCK_ESCALATION = TABLE);
CREATE TABLE dbo.Child
(
ChildID INT NOT NULL
, FatherID INT NOT NULL
, MotherID INT NOT NULL
, Name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Child
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Child
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (ChildID);
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Parents ON dbo.Child (FatherID, MotherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Child
ADD CONSTRAINT FK_Child_Father
FOREIGN KEY (FatherID)
REFERENCES dbo.Father (FatherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Child
ADD CONSTRAINT FK_Child_Mother
FOREIGN KEY (MotherID)
REFERENCES dbo.Mother (MotherID);
-- Insert two children with the same parents
INSERT INTO dbo.Father
(
FatherID
, Name
)
VALUES
(1, 'Alex')
, (2, 'Bob')
, (3, 'Charlie')
INSERT INTO dbo.Mother
(
MotherID
, Name
)
VALUES
(1, 'Alice')
, (2, 'Barbara');
INSERT INTO dbo.Child
(
ChildID
, FatherID
, MotherID
, Name
)
VALUES
(1, 1, 1, 'Adam')
, (2, 1, 1, 'Billy')
, (3, 1, 2, 'Celine')
, (4, 2, 2, 'Derek')
, (5, 3, 1, 'Eric');
-- CTE Gets distinct combinations of parents
WITH distinctParentCombinations (FatherID, MotherID)
AS (SELECT children.FatherID
, children.MotherID
FROM dbo.Child as children
GROUP BY children.FatherID
, children.MotherID
)
-- CTE Gets uses STRING_AGG to get unique combinations of mothers.
, motherGroups (Mothers)
AS (SELECT STRING_AGG(CONVERT(VARCHAR(MAX), distinctParentCombinations.MotherID), '-') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY distinctParentCombinations.MotherID) AS Mothers
FROM distinctParentCombinations
GROUP BY distinctParentCombinations.FatherID
)
-- Remove the COUNT function to see the actual combinations
SELECT COUNT(motherGroups.Mothers) AS UniqueMotherGroups
FROM motherGroups
-- Clean up the example
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Child;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Father;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Mother;
You have a great explanation and setup of your "problem case".
Your setup runs great in (for example) tempdb.
You have solved the problem in a nice way, and I don't think you can optimize it much further if you are going to calculate the mother groups every time you run the query.
There is one small mistake though; You must do a COUNT(DISTINCT motherGroups.Mothers) in your final count.
Since you mention milions of rows, I would suggest a slightly different approach.
If you aggregate the mother groups as soon as there is a change in the Child table, your query can run fast every time - even with millions of rows.
The kind of queries you want to run is seldom run only once, so it would be nice if the heavy work is already done.
Usually I prefer not to use triggers, because you get extra logic in a place where it could be hard to find and debug.
But sometimes triggers are nice to have, especially when you are not able to change the source code running on the clients.
So, my solution is to add a new column to the Father table and to create a trigger which (re)generates the mother group each time there is a change in the Child table.
This way, the hard aggregation work for each father is done as soon there is a change, and you don't have to aggregate when you run your query.
Since you already have millions of rows, we also have to update these existing rows.
I have used SQL Server 2019 for this solution.
*** The solution ***
Add 1 or 2 new columns to the Father table.
If you should add 1 or 2, it depends on what your preferences are:
"Do I want to see the aggregated mother groups for debugging purpose, or do I just trust the hashed values?"
Column 1: Hashed value of the aggregated mother group for each Father row.
The hashed value is VARBINARY and is at least 32 bytes, but we will use VARBINARY(1600):
1600 is less than 1700 which is the max nonclustered index size, so we will not have any problems indexing the column.
Since the hash value is in blocks of 32 bytes, a value of 1600 will cover a really, really, really long aggreated mother group.
-- Column 1: Hashed value of the aggregated mother group for each Father row.
alter table Father add MotherHash varbinary(1600)
create index IX_MotherHash on Father(MotherHash)
Column 2: This column is more optional, and depends on your preferences.
The column could be nice to have for debugging purpose if any questions are made about the result.
Which VARCHAR-length you should use depends on your real data.
MAX? Then you have no problems storing the mother groups, but you might have problems indexing it, since 1700 is the max for an unclustered index. But maybe you don't need to index it?
1700? Then you are able to index the column, but depending on your real data, will this cover the biggest mother group?
Why indexing? If you want to list the aggregated mother groups, it could be faster to read the index than the whole table.
As said; this depends on you (and your data). If we have no need to see the aggregated mother groups, then we don't need this column at all.
For this demo/solution we will add the column for debugging purpose, without any indexing.
-- Column 2: This column is more optional, and depends on your preferences.
alter table Father add MotherGroup varchar(MAX)
go
Create a trigger on the Child table.
It will handle all inserts, updates and deletes in the Child table.
create or alter trigger trIUD_Child on Child
after insert, update, delete
as
begin
set nocount on
-- Get all FatherIDs from the Inserted and Deleted table.
-- An ordinary Temp table is created with a clustered index to get SEEK performance later.
-- The table might also have more than 100 rows, where table variables are not recommended.
declare #numRowsInInsertedDeleted int
create table #rowsInInsertedDeleted(rowId int identity(1, 1), FatherID int)
create unique clustered index ix on #rowsInInsertedDeleted(rowId)
insert #rowsInInsertedDeleted(FatherID)
select distinct f.FatherID
from
(
select i.FatherID from inserted i
union all
select i.FatherID from deleted i
) f
select #numRowsInInsertedDeleted = max(rowId) from #rowsInInsertedDeleted
-- We have to loop each of the FatherIDs, since we might have several rows in the Inserted and Deleted tables.
declare #rowId int = 0
while (#rowId < #numRowsInInsertedDeleted)
begin
-- Get the father for the next row.
select #rowId += 1
declare #fatherId int
select #fatherId = r.FatherID
from #rowsInInsertedDeleted r
where r.rowId = #rowId
-- Aggregate the mothers for this father.
declare #motherGroup varchar(max) = ''
select #motherGroup += ',' + cast(c.MotherID as varchar)
from Child c
where c.FatherID = #fatherId
group by c.MotherID
order by c.MotherID
-- Update the father record.
-- Any empty strings are handled automatically, skip the leading ','.
update Father
set MotherGroup = substring(#motherGroup, 2, 2147483647),
MotherHash = HASHBYTES('SHA2_256', #motherGroup)
where FatherID = #fatherId
end
end
go
Updating existing rows
Since you already have millions of rows, we must aggregate the mother groups for these existing rows.
If you don't have the disk space for logging the update of the whole table, maybe you should take your database out of AG and switch to Simple recovery model for this task?
In that case you should also modify the update with a WHERE clause to update only parts of the table, and run the update for each part until the whole table is updated.
Example: update Child set FatherID = FatherID where FatherID between 1 and 1000000
Note: This update statement could block access to the Child table for other users.
-- Aggregate the mother groups for the existing rows.
-- This could takes minutes to complete, depending on the number of rows.
-- NOTE: This update statement could block access to the Child table for other users.
update Child set FatherID = FatherID
That's it!
You should now be able to quickly get the mother groups on existing rows, and also after future changes in the Child table.
-- Voila - now you can get the unique mother groups any time at a fast speed.
select count(distinct MotherHash) from Father
Thank you for posting such a comprehensive setup for the test data. However, I'm not running any CREATE/DROP statements against my DB so I converted those tables into table variables. Using your data, I came up with the following query. Just change the table names back to your dbo. names and you should be able to test in your environment. I basically concatenate every father/mother combo into a text string using FOR XML PATH. Then I count up all the distinct combos. If you find error in my logic, let me know. I'm just tossing this in the ring of possible solutions.
WITH distinctCombos AS (
SELECT DISTINCT
c.FatherID, c.MotherID
FROM #Child as c
) , motherComboCount AS (
SELECT
f.FatherID
, f.[Name]
, STUFF((
SELECT
',' + CAST(dc.MotherID as nvarchar)
FROM distinctCombos as dc
WHERE dc.FatherID = f.FatherID
ORDER BY dc.MotherID ASC
FOR XML PATH('')
),1,1,'') as motherList
FROM #Father as f
)
SELECT
COUNT(DISTINCT motherList) as UniqueMotherGroups
FROM motherComboCount as mcc
To save a bit of compute power, remove the STUFF function as it's not necessary for the comparison... it just makes the list nicer to look at if displaying... and I'm in the habit of using it.
It looks like the main differences between our methods is the use of FOR XML PATH vs STRING_AGG (I'm still on older SQL.) And I use DISTINCT twice instead of GROUP BY. If you have a larger dataset to test against, let me know how the 2 methods compare. I'm trying to think of a completely set-based method but I can't see it at the moment.
Update: Method 2.
Here's an idea I had using recursive CTEs to build the distinct mother combinations. In your example data, there are only 2 mothers per father. So there would be a total of 4 set-based queries performed (first CTE, 2 queries in the recursive CTE and the final SELECT).
WITH uniqueCombo as (
SELECT DISTINCT
c.FatherID
, c.MotherID
, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY c.FatherID ORDER BY c.MotherID) as row_num
FROM #Child as c
), combos as (
SELECT
uc.FatherID
, uc.MotherID
, CAST(uc.MotherID as nvarchar(max)) as [path]
, row_num
, 0 as hierarchy_num
FROM uniqueCombo as uc
WHERE uc.row_num = 1
UNION ALL
SELECT
uc.FatherID
, uc.MotherID
, co.[path] + ',' + CAST(uc.MotherID as nvarchar(max))
, uc.row_num
, co.hierarchy_num + 1 as heirarchy_num
FROM uniqueCombo as uc
INNER JOIN combos as co
ON co.FatherID = uc.FatherID
--AND co.MotherID <> uc.MotherID
AND co.row_num + 1 = uc.row_num
), rankedCombos as (
SELECT
c.[path]
, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY c.FatherID ORDER BY c.hierarchy_num DESC) as row_num
FROM combos as c
)
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT rc.[path]) as UniqueMotherGroups
FROM rankedCombos as rc
WHERE rc.row_num = 1
Update 2:
I had another idea to use a PIVOT to transpose the records so that the FatherID would be in the left-most column with the MotherIDs as the column headers. To make that work with a dynamic list of MotherIDs, you have to use a dynamic PIVOT/dynamic SQL. (FatherID isn't really needed in the PIVOT so it's not included in the PIVOT query. I just had to describe what the goal is.) After the pivot, you can SELECT DISTINCT to get the unique mother combinations. Then the last SELECT is to get the COUNT. This one I ran in SQL Fiddle:
SQL Fiddle
MS SQL Server 2017 Schema Setup:
-- Create family tables.
CREATE TABLE dbo.Father
(
FatherID INT NOT NULL
, Name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Father
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Father
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (FatherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Father SET (LOCK_ESCALATION = TABLE);
CREATE TABLE dbo.Mother
(
MotherID INT NOT NULL
, Name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Mother
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Mother
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (MotherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Mother SET (LOCK_ESCALATION = TABLE);
CREATE TABLE dbo.Child
(
ChildID INT NOT NULL
, FatherID INT NOT NULL
, MotherID INT NOT NULL
, Name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Child
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Child
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (ChildID);
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Parents ON dbo.Child (FatherID, MotherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Child
ADD CONSTRAINT FK_Child_Father
FOREIGN KEY (FatherID)
REFERENCES dbo.Father (FatherID);
ALTER TABLE dbo.Child
ADD CONSTRAINT FK_Child_Mother
FOREIGN KEY (MotherID)
REFERENCES dbo.Mother (MotherID);
-- Insert two children with the same parents
INSERT INTO dbo.Father
(
FatherID
, Name
)
VALUES
(1, 'Alex')
, (2, 'Bob')
, (3, 'Charlie')
INSERT INTO dbo.Mother
(
MotherID
, Name
)
VALUES
(1, 'Alice')
, (2, 'Barbara');
INSERT INTO dbo.Child
(
ChildID
, FatherID
, MotherID
, Name
)
VALUES
(1, 1, 1, 'Adam')
, (2, 1, 1, 'Billy')
, (3, 1, 2, 'Celine')
, (4, 2, 2, 'Derek')
, (5, 3, 1, 'Eric');
Query 1:
DECLARE #cols AS nvarchar(MAX)
DECLARE #query AS nvarchar(MAX)
SET #cols = STUFF((
SELECT DISTINCT ',' + QUOTENAME(m.MotherID)
FROM Mother as m
FOR XML PATH(''))
,1,1,'')
SET #query = 'SELECT COUNT(mCount) as UniqueMotherGroups FROM (
SELECT DISTINCT ' + #cols + ', 1 as mCount FROM (
SELECT ' + #cols + '
FROM (
SELECT
c.FatherID
, c.MotherID
, 1 as mID
FROM child as c
) x
PIVOT
(
MAX(mID)
FOR MotherID in (' + #cols + ')
) p
) as m
) as mg'
--SELECT #query
Exec(#query)
Results:
| UniqueMotherGroups |
|--------------------|
| 3 |
UPDATE 3: Here's one other idea... create a results table with a unique constraint and with IGNORE_DUP_KEY=ON. You could use this in a function or stored procedure, or, setup a trigger to put the mother combinations into a unique-combo-holding-table. With IGNORE_DUP_KEY=ON, you can insert every combo and only the unique combos will remain. Then just do a count of all the rows.
--Create a table to hold the results:
CREATE TABLE results (
ChildID int not null
, UniqueCombos nvarchar(50) not null
PRIMARY KEY WITH (IGNORE_DUP_KEY = ON)
);
--Insert all combos into the results table. The unique constraint will cause only unique entries to remain.
INSERT INTO results (ChildID, UniqueCombos)
SELECT DISTINCT
c.ChildID
, (
SELECT ',' + CAST(MotherID as nvarchar(500))
FROM Child as c2
WHERE c2.ChildID = c.ChildID
ORDER BY c2.MotherID
FOR XML PATH('')
) as mother_combos
FROM Child as c
;
--Count up all the rows in the results table. Since these are all unique combinations, it should be fast to sum.
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM results;
If you accept to define a maximum number of mothers per father (here 7) you may try:
select count(*) as UniqueMotherGroups from (
select distinct m1, m2, m3, m4, m5, m6, m7 from (
select FatherID, row_number() over(partition by FatherID order by motherid) as rn, motherid
from (
select distinct FatherID, MotherID
from t_Child
)
)
pivot (
max(motherid) for rn in (1 as m1,2 as m2,3 as m3,4 as m4,5 as m5,6 as m6,7 as m7)
)
)
;
UNIQUEMOTHERGROUPS
------------------
3
Here is one idea. Instead of using precise STRING_AGG you can calculate a hash / checksum of the group. You don't need to know the exact composition of the group, you just need to distinguish between different groups. Calculating of the hash may be faster than concatenating strings.
SQL Server has a function CHECKSUM_AGG
You can write your own hashing function with CLR.
Sample data
CREATE TABLE #Child
(
ChildID INT NOT NULL IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY
,FatherID INT NOT NULL
,MotherID INT NOT NULL
,Name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);
INSERT INTO #Child
(
FatherID
,MotherID
,Name
)
VALUES
(1, 1, 'Adam')
,(1, 1, 'Billy')
,(1, 2, 'Celine')
,(2, 2, 'Derek')
,(3, 1, 'Eric')
,(4, 1, 'A')
,(4, 1, 'B')
,(4, 2, 'C')
,(4, 2, 'D')
,(4, 2, 'E')
,(5, 2, 'F')
,(6, 2, 'G')
;
Query
WITH
distinctParentCombinations
AS
(
SELECT
FatherID
,MotherID
FROM #Child
GROUP BY
FatherID
,MotherID
)
,motherGroups
AS
(
SELECT
FatherID
,CHECKSUM_AGG(MotherID) AS MotherGroup
FROM distinctParentCombinations
GROUP BY
FatherID
)
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT MotherGroup) AS UniqueMotherGroups
FROM motherGroups
;
Result
+--------------------+
| UniqueMotherGroups |
+--------------------+
| 3 |
+--------------------+
You need to compare performance of all methods on your actual data.
Obviously, with CHECKSUM_AGG it is possible that some of the groups will be missed. There is a chance that two different groups will generate the same checksum.
You know better if this is acceptable.
General way to speed up calculations is to have some of the results already pre-calculated. In your case, for the first part you can create indexed view as follows:
CREATE OR ALTER VIEW vw_distinctParentCombinations WITH SCHEMABINDING AS
SELECT children.FatherID
, children.MotherID
,COUNT_BIG(*) AS [wifes_count]
FROM dbo.Child as children
GROUP BY children.FatherID
, children.MotherID
GO
CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX IX_vw_distinctParentCombinations ON vw_distinctParentCombinations
(
FatherID,MotherID
);
Then in your initial query, you can avoid the first CTE:
-- CTE Gets distinct combinations of parents
WITH motherGroups (Mothers)
AS
(SELECT STRING_AGG(CONVERT(VARCHAR(MAX), distinctParentCombinations.MotherID), '-') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY distinctParentCombinations.MotherID) AS Mothers
FROM vw_distinctParentCombinations distinctParentCombinations WITH(NOEXPAND)
GROUP BY distinctParentCombinations.FatherID
)
-- Remove the COUNT function to see the actual combinations
SELECT COUNT(motherGroups.Mothers) AS UniqueMotherGroups
FROM motherGroups;
This will avoid the initial read of the large table and depending the distinct combinations of the pairs (father - mother) it can reduce the view size significantly.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of limitations in order to create an indexed view, and you are not able to create such for the second CTE.
If we change our mind and look this issue in different view, simply we can get the count of mothers with this query:
SELECT Count(distinct ConcatMothers) UniqueMothersCount from(
SELECT FatherID, concat(FatherID,'-',SUM(MotherID)) ConcatMothers
FROM dbo.Child
GROUP BY FatherID) t;
Or even you can use Dense_Rank() like this:
SELECT Max(RankMothers) UniqueMothersCount from(
SELECT FatherID, DENSE_RANK() over (order by concat(FatherID,'-',SUM(MotherID))) RankMothers
FROM dbo.Child
GROUP BY FatherID) t;
For the performance it is hard to measure because dataset is small but since we have one column in the group by and the motherId is in the select maybe we can change index as below:
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Parents ON dbo.Child (FatherID) Include(MotherID);
but you need to check it on your dataset.
I have a table of changes to an entity. I am trying to rebuild the data from the changes.
This is my Changes table:
CREATE TABLE Changes
(
Id IDENTITY,
RecordId INT,
Field INT,
Val VARCHAR(MAX),
DateOfChange DATETIME
);
Field column is a reference to what field changed, Val is the new value, RecordId is the Id of the record that changed. Ideally the Record table would contain the latest values but I am not that lucky. There are 10 different fields that changes are tracked, mostly dates but some other types are thrown in there.
This is my Record table:
CREATE TABLE Records
(
Id IDENTITY,
AUserGeneratedIdentifer VARCHAR(12)
)
I'd like to have a view to query by the rolled up values.
SELECT
AUserGeneratedIdentitfier, DateOpened, DateClosed, etc
FROM
RecordView
WHERE
AUserGeneratedIdentitfier = 'something'
I am trying to implemented it with CTEs but I am wondering if this is the correct way. I am using a CTE per field I am trying to get to.
WITH DateOpened AS
(
SELECT
RecordId, Val,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY RecordId ORDER BY DateOfChanged DESC) Rank
FROM
Changes
WHERE
FieldId = #DateOpenedId
) --- ... Repeat for every field
SELECT (my fields)
FROM Records
INNER JOIN <all ctes> on Record Id
But this method feels wrong to me, possibly due to my lack of SQL experience. Is there a better way that I am missing here? What are the performance implications of having multiple CTEs on the same table and joining with them?
Please excuse the hastily thrown together pseudo code, I hope it illustrates my problem accurately
I think you should be able to use a single ROW_NUMBER and pivot it as below.
DECLARE #Records TABLE (Id INT IDENTITY, AUserGeneratedIdentifer VARCHAR(12))
DECLARE #Changes TABLE (Id INT IDENTITY, RecordId INT, Field INT, Val VARCHAR(MAX), DateOfChange DATETIME);
INSERT INTO #Records (AUserGeneratedIdentifer)
VALUES ('qwer'), ('asdf')
INSERT INTO #Changes (RecordId, Field, Val, DateOfChange)
VALUES (1, 1, 'foo', '2021-01-01' ),
(2, 1, 'fooz', '2021-01-01' ),
(2, 2, 'barz', '2021-01-01' ),
(1, 2, 'bar', '2021-01-01' ),
(1, 1, 'foo2', '2021-01-02' ),
(2, 2, 'barz2', '2021-01-02' )
SELECT piv.RecordId, piv.[1], piv.[2]
FROM (
SELECT C.RecordId, C.Field, C.Val, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY C.RecordId, C.Field ORDER BY C.DateOfChange DESC) RowNum
FROM #Changes C
) sub
PIVOT (
MAX(Val)
FOR Field IN ([1], [2])
) piv
WHERE piv.RowNum = 1
I perform steps:
Create temporal table and fill it with data and unique order column [_oid]
Insert everything from temporal table into real table except fictional [_oid], outputting generated [id]'s
Return those generated [id]'s along with corresponding [_oid]
SQL:
CREATE TABLE #temp
(
[Hash] INT NOT NULL,
[Size] INT NOT NULL,
[Data] NVARCHAR(MAX),
[_oid] INT NOT NULL
)
--here insert data into #temp--
INSERT [dbo].[TestObjects]
OUTPUT INSERTED.[Id]
SELECT [Hash], [Size], [Data]
FROM #temp
DROP TABLE #temp
How I can return ([Id], [_oid]) rows ? ....Or at least return [Id] ordered by [_oid] ?
I know insert does not preserve order of inserted items in it's output, but still...
I think you what you are asking for is INSERT INTO, as so:
INSERT INTO [dbo].[TestObjects]
SELECT Hash, Size, Data FROM #temp
ORDER BY _oid
But as you say, there's no guarantee about order when you select from TestObjects, so if it's important can you not have a field in TestObjects you can ORDER BY when you SELECT from it?
IF your insert into #temp is such that both o_id and (hash,size,data) are unique for each row (ie keys), then you could retrieve the inserted o_id from #temp:
select t.[_oid],to.[Id]
from #temp t
inner join [dbo].[TestObjects] to
on t.Hash=to.Hash and t.Size=to.Size and t.data=to.data
As noted by George Menoutis, I did merge:
MERGE [dbo].[TestObjects] AS T_Base
USING #temp AS T_Source
ON (0<>0)
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN INSERT ([Hash],[Size],[Data]) VALUES (T_Source.[Hash],T_Source.[Size],T_Source.[Data])
OUTPUT INSERTED.[Id], T_Source.[_oid];
If anyone have better approach - feel free to contribute to this answer.
I'm trying to adopt this solution to remove duplicate rows from a database table. However, in my case, whether two rows are considered "duplicates", another table must be checked. A full repro for my scenario would be like this:
-- Foreign key between these tables as well as "Group" table omitted for simplicity...
DECLARE #ItemType TABLE(Id INT, Title NVARCHAR(50), GroupId INT);
DECLARE #Item TABLE(Id INT IDENTITY(1,1), ItemTypeId INT, Created DATETIME2);
INSERT INTO #ItemType (Id, Title, GroupId)
VALUES (1, 'apple', 1), (2, 'banana', 1), (3, 'beans', 2);
INSERT INTO #Item (ItemTypeId, Created)
VALUES (1, '20141201'), (2, '20140615'), (3, '20140614');
-- Note: Id's are generated automatically
WITH cte AS (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY GroupId ORDER BY Created) AS Rnk
FROM #Item AS i
JOIN #ItemType AS it ON i.ItemTypeId = it.Id
)
DELETE FROM cte
WHERE Rnk > 1;
This fails, obviously, with the following message:
View or function 'cte' is not updatable because the modification affects multiple base tables.
Can this be solved while sticking with the elegant cte-solution? Or does this require a move over to a version based on DELETE or even MERGE INTO?
You can stick with the CTE version, but the DELETE has to be more explicit about which rows it's going to remove. Just pass the #Item.Id from the CTE to and filter to be deleted rows based on that:
WITH cte AS (
SELECT i.Id,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY GroupId ORDER BY Created) AS Rnk
FROM #Item AS i
JOIN #ItemType AS it ON i.ItemTypeId = it.Id
)
DELETE FROM #Item
WHERE Id IN (SELECT Id FROM cte WHERE Rnk > 1);