Get max on comma separated values in column - sql

Question

How to get max on comma separated values in Original_Ids column and get max value in one column and remaining ids in different column.
|Original_Ids | Max_Id| Remaining_Ids |
|123,534,243,345| 534 | 123,234,345 |
Upadte -
If I already have Max_id and just need below equation?
Remaining_Ids = Original_Ids - Max_id
Thanks

Answer 1

Thanks to the excellent possibilities of array manipulation in Postgres, this could be done relatively easy by converting the string to an array and from there to a set.
Then regular queries on that set are possible. With max() the maximum can be selected and with EXCEPT ALL the maximum can be removed from the set.
A set can then be converted to an array and with array_to_string() and the array can be converted to a delimited string again.
SELECT ids original_ids,
(SELECT max(un.id::integer)
FROM unnest(string_to_array(ids,
',')) un(id)) max_id,
array_to_string(ARRAY((SELECT un.id::integer
FROM unnest(string_to_array(ids,
',')) un(id)
EXCEPT ALL
SELECT max(un.id::integer)
FROM unnest(string_to_array(ids,
',')) un(id))),
',') remaining_ids
FROM elbat;
Another option would have been regexp_split_to_table() which directly produces a set (or regexp_split_to_array() but than we'd had the possible regular expression overhead and still had to convert the array to a set).
But nevertheless you just should (almost) never use delimited lists (nor arrays). Use a table, that's (almost) always the best option.

Answer 2

SQL Fiddle
You can use a window function (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/tutorial-window.html) to get the max element per unnested array. After that you can reaggregate the elements and remove the calculated max value from the array.
Result:
a max_elem remaining
123,534,243,345 534 123,243,345
3,23,1 23 3,17
42 42
56,123,234,345,345 345 56,123,234
This query needs only one split/unnest as well as only one max calculation.
SELECT
a,
max_elem,
array_remove(array_agg(elements), max_elem) as remaining -- C
FROM (
SELECT
*,
MAX(elements) OVER (PARTITION BY a) as max_elem -- B
FROM (
SELECT
a,
unnest((string_to_array(a, ','))::int[]) as elements -- A
FROM arrays
)s
)s
GROUP BY a, max_elem
A: string_to_array converts the string list into an array. Because the arrays are treated as string arrays you need the cast them into integer arrays by adding ::int[]. The unnest() expands all array elements into own rows.
B: window function MAX gives the maximum value of the single arrays as max_elem
C: array_agg reaggregates the elements through the GROUP BY id. After that array_remove removes the max_elem value from the array.
If you do not like to store them as pure arrays but as string list again you could add array_to_string. But I wouldn't recommend this because your data are integer arrays and not strings. For every further calculation you would need this string cast. A even better way (as already stated by #stickybit) is not to store the elements as arrays but as unnested data. As you can see in nearly every operation should would do the unnest before.
Note:
It would be better to use an ID to adress the columns/arrays instead of the origin string as in SQL Fiddle with IDs

Answer 3

If you install the extension intarray this is quite easy.
First you need to create the extension (you have to be superuser to do that):
create extension intarray;
Then you can do the following:
select original_ids,
original_ids[1] as max_id,
sort(original_ids - original_ids[1]) as remaining_ids
from (
select sort_desc(string_to_array(original_ids,',')::int[]) as original_ids
from bad_design
) t
But you shouldn't be storing comma separated values to begin with