MS Access 2013, How to add totals row within SQL - sql

Question

I'm in need of some assistance. I have search and not found what I'm looking for. I have an assigment for school that requires me to use SQL. I have a query that pulls some colunms from two tables:
SELECT Course.CourseNo, Course.CrHrs, Sections.Yr, Sections.Term, Sections.Location
FROM Course
INNER JOIN Sections ON Course.CourseNo = Sections.CourseNo
WHERE Sections.Term="spring";
I need to add a Totals row at the bottom to count the CourseNo and Sum the CrHrs. It has to be done through SQL query design as I need to paste the code. I know it can be done with the datasheet view but she will not accept that. Any advice?

Answer 1

To accomplish this, you can union your query together with an aggregation query. Its not clear from your question which columns you are trying to get "Totals" from, but here's an example of what I mean using your query and getting counts of each (kind of useless example - but you should be able to apply to what you are doing):
SELECT
[Course].[CourseNo]
, [Course].[CrHrs]
, [Sections].[Yr]
, [Sections].[Term]
, [Sections].[Location]
FROM
[Course]
INNER JOIN [Sections] ON [Course].[CourseNo] = [Sections].[CourseNo]
WHERE [Sections].[Term] = [spring]
UNION ALL
SELECT
"TOTALS"
, SUM([Course].[CrHrs])
, count([Sections].[Yr])
, Count([Sections].[Term])
, Count([Sections].[Location])
FROM
[Course]
INNER JOIN [Sections] ON [Course].[CourseNo] = [Sections].[CourseNo]
WHERE [Sections].[Term] = “spring”

Answer 2

You can prepare your "total" query separately, and then output both query results together with "UNION".
It might look like:
SELECT Course.CourseNo, Course.CrHrs, Sections.Yr, Sections.Term, Sections.Location
FROM Course
INNER JOIN Sections ON Course.CourseNo = Sections.CourseNo
WHERE Sections.Term="spring"
UNION
SELECT "Total", SUM(Course.CrHrs), SUM(Sections.Yr), SUM(Sections.Term), SUM(Sections.Location)
FROM Course
INNER JOIN Sections ON Course.CourseNo = Sections.CourseNo
WHERE Sections.Term="spring";

Answer 3

Whilst you can certainly union the aggregated totals query to the end of your original query, in my opinion this would be really bad practice and would be undesirable for any real-world application.
Consider that the resulting query could no longer be used for any meaningful analysis of the data: if displayed in a datagrid, the user would not be able to sort the data without the totals row being interspersed amongst the rest of the data; the user could no longer use the built-in Totals option to perform their own aggregate operation, and the insertion of a row only identifiable by the term totals could even conflict with other data within the set.
Instead, I would suggest displaying the totals within an entirely separate form control, using a separate query such as the following (based on your own example):
SELECT Count(Course.CourseNo) as Courses, Sum(Course.CrHrs) as Hours
FROM Course INNER JOIN Sections ON Course.CourseNo = Sections.CourseNo
WHERE Sections.Term = "spring";
However, since CrHrs are fields within your Course table and not within your Sections table, the above may yield multiples of the desired result, with the number of hours multiplied by the number of corresponding records in the Sections table.
If this is the case, the following may be more suitable:
SELECT Count(Course.CourseNo) as Courses, Sum(Course.CrHrs) as Hours
FROM
Course INNER JOIN
(SELECT DISTINCT s.CourseNo FROM Sections s WHERE s.Term = "spring") q
ON Course.CourseNo = q.CourseNo