I have a QRY im developing in Oracle for spotfire. In the where statement, I have a decision case statement and if its True, im trying to pass a list of items to match a column, below is what I have, but its throwing a missing right parenthesis error and I cannot determine why. In short, when a variable is determined True (in this case 9>8 for the example, I need it to result those items, else, result the entire column with no limits.
Note: This works fine when its only 1 item being passed, i.e. 'BOB' but as soon as its multiple, this error occurs.
and Column1 = (CASE When 9>8 Then ('BOB','TOM') Else Column1 END)
Case expressions are best avoided in the where clause. Instead, write the logic with AND and OR:
And (
(9>8 AND Column1 IN ('BOB','TOM'))
OR 9<=8 -- You say you check a variable here, don't forget to check for NULL
)
Oracle does not have a boolean type for use in SQL queries.
Instead, just use basic logic:
and ( (9 > 8 and Column1 in ('BOB','TOM')) or
9 <= 8
)
Related
I am trying to write a query in Hive with a Case statement in which the condition depends on one of the values in the current row (whether or not it is equal to its predecessor). I want to evaluate it on the fly, this way, therefore requiring a nested query, not by making it another column first and comparing 2 columns. (I was able to do the latter, but that's really second-best). Does anyone know how to make this work?
Thanks.
My query:
SELECT * ,
CASE
WHEN
(SELECT lag(field_with_duplicates,1) over (order by field_with_duplicates) FROM my_table b
WHERE b.id=a.id) = a.field_with_duplicates
THEN “Duplicate”
ELSE “”
END as Duplicate_Indicator
FROM my_table a
Error:
java.sql.SQLException: org.apache.spark.sql.AnalysisException: cannot recognize input near 'SELECT' 'lag' '(' in expression specification; line 4 pos 9
Notes:
The reason I needed the complicated 'lag' function is that the unique Id's in the table are not consecutive, but I don't think that's where it's at: I tested by substituting another simpler inner query and got the same error message.
Speaking of 'duplicates', I did search on this issue before posting, but the only SELECT's inside CASE's I found were in the THEN statement, and if that works the same, it suggests mine should work too.
You do not need the subquery inside CASE:
SELECT a.* ,
CASE
WHEN prev_field_with_duplicates = field_with_duplicates
THEN “Duplicate”
ELSE “”
END as Duplicate_Indicator
FROM (select a.*,
lag(field_with_duplicates,1) over (order by field_with_duplicates) as prev_field_with_duplicates
from my_table a
)a
or even you can use lag() inside CASE instead without subquery at all (I'm not sure if it will work in all Hive versions ):
CASE
WHEN lag(field_with_duplicates,1) over (order by field_with_duplicates) = field_with_duplicates
THEN “Duplicate”
ELSE “”
END as Duplicate_Indicator
Thanks to #MatBailie for the answer in his comment. Don't I feel silly...
Resolved
Given:
The following Select statement:
select case NULL
when NULL then 0
else 1
end
Problem:
I'm expecting this to return 0 but instead it returns 1. What gives?
Generally speaking, NULL is not something you should attempt to compare for equality, which is what a case statement does. You can use "Is NULL" to test for it. There is no expectation that NULL != NULL or that NULL = NULL. It's an indeterminate, undefined value, not a hard constant.
-- To encompass questions in the comments --
If you need to retrieve a value when you may encounter a NULL column, try this instead:
Case
When SomeColumn IS NULL
Then 0
Else 1
End
I believe that should work. As far as your original post is concerned:
Select Case NULL
When NULL then 0 // Checks for NULL = NULL
else 1 // NULL = NULL is not true (technically, undefined), else happens
end
The trouble is that your Case select automatically attempts to use equality operations. That simply doesn't work with NULL.
I was going to add this as a comment to Aaron's answer, but it was getting too long, so I'll add it as another (part of the) answer.
The CASE statement actually has two distinct modes, simple and searched.
From BOL:
The CASE expression has two formats:
The simple CASE expression compares an expression to a set of simple expressions to determine the result.
The searched CASE expression evaluates a set of Boolean expressions to determine the result.
When the simple CASE (your example) does what it describes as comparison it does an equality comparison - i.e. =
This is clarified in the later documentation:
The simple CASE expression operates by comparing the first expression
to the expression in each WHEN clause for equivalency. If these
expressions are equivalent, the expression in the THEN clause will be
returned.
Allows only an equality check.
Because anything = NULL is always false in ANSI SQL (and if you didn't know this, you need to read up on NULLs in SQL more generally, particularly also with the behavior in the other searched comparison - WHERE x IN (a, b, c)), you cannot use NULL in a simple case and have it ever be compared to a value, with a NULL either in the initial expression or in the list of expressions to be compared against.
If you want to check for NULL, you will have to use an IF/ELSE construct or the searched CASE with a full expression.
I agree that it's kind of unfortunate there is no version which supports an IS comparison to make it easier to write:
select case colname
when IS NULL then 0
else 1
end
Which would make writing certain long CASE statements easier:
select case colname
when IS NULL then ''
when 1 then 'a'
when 2 then 'b'
when 3 then 'c'
when 4 then 'd'
else 'z'
end
But that's just wishful thinking...
An option is to use ISNULL or COALESCE:
select case COALESCE(colname, 999999) -- 999999 is some value never used
when 999999 then ''
when 1 then 'a'
when 2 then 'b'
when 3 then 'c'
when 4 then 'd'
else 'z'
end
But it isn't always a great option.
In addition to the other answers, you need to change the syntax for CASE slightly to do this:
SELECT CASE
WHEN NULL IS NULL THEN 0
ELSE 1
END;
Using the value in your syntax implicitly uses an equals comparison. NULL is unknown, and so is NULL = NULL, so with your current code you will always get zero 1 (geez I did it too).
To get the behavior you want, you can use SET ANSI_NULLS ON; however note that this can change other code in ways you may not be able to predict, and the setting is deprecated - so it will stop working at all in a future version of SQL Server (see this SQL Server 2008 doc).
You need to use the IS NULL operator. Standard comparison operators do not work with NULL.
Check out these MSDN articles about Null that may be useful:
IS [NOT] NULL (Transact-SQL)
Null Values
In most RDBMS:es, this work:
select (5 > 3)
and evaluates to true. It doesn't work in MS Transact SQL and the only workaround I've found is to write:
select case when 5 > 3 then 1 else 0 end
Which kind of sucks because it is much more verbose. Is there a better way to write the above kind of checks?
If the problem is arithmetic comparison:
select (5 - 3)
Then at the application level test for < or = or > 0.
You could write it as a scalar-valued function, but it will be very slow on large datasets.
If your program often requires such case constructs you could create your set of functions that will have user functions like Bool_IsGreater(left, right) that will return you your desired 0 or 1.
SQL Server doesn't support boolean value type anyway even for basic column use.
If you will need performance and those 5 and 3 values come naturally from some select query you might want to create a new column and set its value to 1 or 0 by trigger or something, which could help with performance.
I have the following SQL query:
select AuditStatusId
from dbo.ABC_AuditStatus
where coalesce(AuditFrequency, 0) <> 0
I'm struggling a bit to understand it. It looks pretty simple, and I know what the coalesce operator does (more or less), but dont' seem to get the MEANING.
Without knowing anymore information except the query above, what do you think it means?
select AuditStatusId
from dbo.ABC_AuditStatus
where AuditFrequency <> 0 and AuditFrequency is not null
Note that the use of Coalesce means that it will not be possible to use an index properly to satisfy this query.
COALESCE is the ANSI standard function to deal with NULL values, by returning the first non-NULL value based on the comma delimited list. This:
WHERE COALESCE(AuditFrequency, 0) != 0
..means that if the AuditFrequency column is NULL, convert the value to be zero instead. Otherwise, the AuditFrequency value is returned.
Since the comparison is to not return rows where the AuditFrequency column value is zero, rows where AuditFrequency is NULL will also be ignored by the query.
It looks like it's designed to detect a null AuditFrequency as zero and thus hide those rows.
From what I can see, it checks for fields that aren't 0 or null.
I think it is more accurately described by this:
select AuditStatusId
from dbo.ABC_AuditStatus
where (AuditFrequency IS NOT NULL AND AuditFrequency != 0) OR 0 != 0
I'll admit the last part will never do anything and maybe i'm just being pedantic but to me this more accurately describes your query.
The idea is that it is desireable to express a single search condition using a single expression but it's merely style, a question of taste:
One expression:
WHERE age = COALESCE(#parameter_value, age);
Two expressions:
WHERE (
age = #parameter_value
OR
#parameter_value IS NULL
);
Here's another example:
One expression:
WHERE age BETWEEN 18 AND 65;
Two expressions
WHERE (
age >= 18
AND
age <= 65
);
Personally, I have a strong personal perference for single expressions and find them easier to read... if I am familiar with the pattern used ;) Whether they perform differently is another matter...
I'm attempting to create a T-SQL case statement to filter a query based on whether a field is NULL or if it contains a value. It would be simple if you could assign NULL or NOT NULL as the result of a case but that doesn't appear possible.
Here's the psuedocode:
WHERE DateColumn = CASE #BitInput
WHEN 0 THEN (all null dates)
WHEN 1 THEN (any non-null date)
WHEN NULL THEN (return all rows)
From my understanding, the WHEN 0 condition can be achieved by not providing a WHEN condition at all (to return a NULL value).
The WHEN 1 condition seems like it could use a wildcard character but I'm getting an error regarding type conversion. Assigning the column to itself fixes this.
I have no idea what to do for the WHEN NULL condition. My internal logic seems to think assigning the column to itself should solve this but it does not as stated above.
I have recreated this using dynamic SQL but for various reasons I'd prefer to have it created in the native code.
I'd appreciate any input. Thanks.
The CASE expression (as OMG Ponies said) is mixing and matching datatypes (as you spotted), in addition you can not compare to NULL using = or WHEN.
WHERE
(#BitInput = 0 AND DateColumn IS NULL)
OR
(#BitInput = 1 AND DateColumn IS NOT NULL)
OR
#BitInput IS NULL
You could probably write it using CASE but what you want is an OR really.
You can also use IF..ELSE or UNION ALL to separate the 3 cases