How to get the differences between two rows **and** the name of the field where the difference is, in BigQuery? - sql

Question

I have a table in BigQuery like this:
Name
Phone Number
Address
John
123456778564
1 Penny Lane
John
873452987424
1 Penny Lane
Mary
845704562848
87 5th Avenue
Mary
845704562848
54 Lincoln Rd.
Amy
342847327234
4 Ocean Drive Avenue
Amy
347907387469
98 Truman Rd.
I want to get a table with the differences between two consecutive rows and the name of the field where occurs the difference:
I mean this:
Name
Field
Before
After
John
Phone Number
123456778564
873452987424
Mary
Address
87 5th Avenue
54 Lincoln Rd.
Amy
Phone Number
342847327234
347907387469
Amy
Address
4 Ocean Drive Avenue
98 Truman Rd.
How can I do this ? I've looked on other posts but couldn't find something that corresponds to my need.
Thank you

Answer 1

Consider below BigQuery'ish solution
select Name, ['Phone Number', 'Address'][offset(offset)] Field,
prev_field as Before, field as After
from (
select timestamp, Name, offset, field,
lag(field) over (partition by Name, offset order by timestamp) as prev_field
from yourtable,
unnest([`Phone Number`, Address]) field with offset
)
where prev_field != field
if applied to sample data in your question - output is
As you can see here - no matter how many columns in your table that you need to compare - it is still just one query - no unions and such.
You just need to enumerate your columns in two places
['Phone Number', 'Address'][offset(offset)] Field
and
unnest([`Phone Number`, Address]) field with offset
Note: you can further refactor above using scripting's execute immediate to compose such lists within the query on the fly (check my other answers - I frequently use such technique in them)

Answer 2

One method is just use to use lag() and union all
select name, 'phone', prev_phone as before, phone as after
from (select name, phone,
lag(phone) over (partition by name order by timestamp) as prev_phone
from t
) t
where prev_phone <> phone
union all
select name, 'address', prev_address as before, address as afte4r
from (select name, address,
lag(address) over (partition by name order by timestamp) as prev_address
from t
) t
where prev_address <> address