I am new to SQL and working on a database that needs a binary indicator based on the presence of string values in a column. I'm trying to make a new table as follows:
Original:
Indicator
a, b, c
c, d, e
Desired:
Indicator
type
a, b, c
1
c, d, e
0
SQL code:
SELECT
ID,
Contract,
Indicator,
CASE
WHEN Indicator IN ('a', 'b')
THEN 1
ELSE 0
END as Type
INTO new_table
FROM old_table
The table I keep creating reports every type as 0.
I also have 200+ distinct indicators, so it will be really time-consuming to write each as:
CASE
WHEN Indicator = 'a' THEN '1'
WHEN Indicator = 'b' THEN '1'
Is there a more streamlined way to think about this?
Thanks!
I think the first step is to understand why your code doesn’t work right now.
If your examples of what’s Indicator column are literally the strings you noted (a, b, c in one string and c, d, e in another) you should understand that your case statement is saying “I am looking for an exact match on the full value of Indicator against the following list -
The letter A or
The letter B
Essentially- you are saying “hey SQL, does ‘a,b,c’ match to ‘a’? Or does ‘a,b,c’ match to ‘b’. ?”
Obviously SQL’s answer is “these don’t match” which is why you get all 0s.
You can try wildcard matching with the LIKE syntax.
Case when Indicator like ‘%a%’ or Indicator like ‘%b%’ then 1 else 0 end as Type
Now, if the abc and cde strings aren’t REALLY what’s in your database then this approach may not work well for you.
Example, let’s say your real values are words that are all slapped together in a single string.
Let’s say that your strings are 3 words each.
Cat, Dog, Man
Catalog, Stick, Shoe
Hair, Hellcat, Belt
And let’s say that Cat is a value that should cause Type to be 1.
If you write: case when Indicator like ‘%cat%’ then 1 else 0 end as Type - all 3 rows will get a 1 because the wildcard will match Cat in Catalog and cat in Hellcat.
I think the bottom line is that unless your Indicator values really are 3 letters and your match criteria is a single letter, you very well could be better off writing a 200 line long case statement if you need this done any time soon.
A better approach to consider (depending on things like are you going to have 300 different combinations a week or month or year from now?)
If yes, wouldn’t it be nice if you had a table with a total of 6 rows - like so?
Indicator | Indictor_Parsed
a,b,c | a
a,b,c | b
a,b,c | c
c,d,e | c
c,d,e | d
c,d,e | e
Then you could write the query as you have it case when Indicator_Parsed in (‘a’, ‘b’) then 1 else 0 end as Type - as a piece of a more verbose solution.
If this approach seems useful to you, here’s a link to the page that lets you parse those comma-separated-values into additional rows. Turning a Comma Separated string into individual rows
ON mysql/sql server You can do it as follows :
insert into table2
select Indicator,
CASE WHEN Indicator like '%a%' or Indicator like '%b%' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END As type
from table1;
demo here
You can use the REGEXP operator to check for presence of either a, b or both.
SELECT Indicator,
Indicator REGEXP '.*[ab].*'
FROM tab
If you need that into a table, you either create it from scratch
CREATE your_table AS
SELECT Indicator,
Indicator REGEXP '.*[ab].*'
FROM tab
or you insert values in it:
INSERT INTO your_table
SELECT Indicator,
Indicator REGEXP '.*[ab].*'
FROM tab
Check the demo here.
I need to write query to find a specific value however that value should be the only value in the cell
Eg: If I'm using the like keyword to find "ort"
Cell 1 contains -> bqr ort abd
cell 2 contains -> ort
cell 1 should not be returned in the select statement only cell 2 even though ort is in cell 1.
Just try this out:
select* tablename from tablename where cell="ort";
If you still face any issue feel free to ask.
I'm looking to select the primary key of a row and I've only got a column that contains info (in a substring) that I need to select the row.
E.g. MyTable
ID | Label
------------
11 | 1593:#:#:RE: test
12 | 1239#:#:#some more random text
13 | 12415#:#:#some more random text about the weather
14 | 369#:#:#some more random text about the StackOverflow
The label column has always a delimiter of :#:#:
So really I guess, I'd need to be able to split this row by the delimiter, grab the first part of the label column (i.e. the number I'm looking) to get the id I wanted.
So, If I wanted row with ID of 14, then I'd be:
Select ID from MyTable
where *something* = '369'
Any ideas on how to construct something ..or how best to go about this:)
I'm completely stumped and haven't been able to find how to do this.
Thanks,
How about:
WHERE label LIKE '369#%'?
No reason to get fancy.
Although.. if you are going to do this search often, then maybe pre-split that value out to another column as part of your ETL process and index it.
In table A -> Column X there is some data which has numbers, alphabets and special characters. Most of the records has single line of data but some of them has 2 or 3 lines of data.
1 this is a sample description of data 01/11/2017 # 123'~
Records with two lines of data
1 this is a sample description
2 of data 22/11/2017 #~ 12##'
I need to do a select query to get the records which has 2 lines of data in Column X of table A.
I use TOAD and the above mentioned sample data is from the Grid popup editor
thanks
You could select those rows that contain a new line (do not know your sample data, either chr(10) or chr(13)):
select *
from tableA
where instr(columnX, chr(10)) > 0;
The solution is taken from this SO answer, please do not forget to upvote the linked solution if it helped you.
I have a powerpivot table that contains 2 columns:
Column 1 contains strings.
Column 2 contains comma delimited strings.
I would like to be able to display all the rows from column 1 when rows from column 2 contains the selection from a filter or slicer. For example:
String Values
ABCD A,A,B
EFGH A,C
if A is selected I would display both rows, if B is selected I would display only row 1...etc.
I know I can split the records - but this is not practical for me - the above is only the top of the iceberg. VBA is out of the question since this will published in SharePoint. Anybody has an idea on how I could do that ? Thanks.
I found the solution in a blog from Javier Guillem:
http://javierguillen.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/simulating-an-approximate-match-vlookup-in-powerpivot/
If in my example the name of the table is "facts", I create a second unlinked table called dimRef that I populate with all possible values that I am interested to match: A,B,C,D...etc.
Then I define the measure M as:
M:=If ( Hasonevalue(facts[Values] ),
Calculate (
LASTNONBLANK (dimRef[String], 1 ),
Filter ( dimRef, SEARCH(dimRef[String],Values(facts[String]),1,0) > 0 )
)
)
I can then use the string column of the facts table and the measure in a pivot table and use dimRef as a selector. If filters the row as per the selection.
One small detail: the measure is not available in PowerView...Anybody knows why ?