In one of the technical interviews I was asked to find the last row of a Table without using where clause or any other defined sql functions. It was given that the table has integer ids as Primary key in the ascending order. I was only able to give an answer by order by desc of the table and later stuck on how to get the top row without where or any function. Can someone please help.
EDIT : There was no database constraint in the question. Assume any database which solves the query
In Oracle 11g and below, this is not possible as it does not support the TOP/LIMIT/FETCH syntax and you would normally do:
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY id DESC
)
WHERE ROWNUM = 1;
In PostgreSQL, Oracle 12 and SQL Server 2012 you can do:
SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY id DESC
OFFSET 0 ROWS -- This line is optional in Oracle 12, PostgreSQL
FETCH FIRST 1 ROW ONLY;
In SQL Server, you can use TOP:
SELECT TOP 1
*
FROM table_name
ORDER BY id DESC
In MySQL, you can use LIMIT:
SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY id DESC
LIMIT 1;
TRY ROWCOUNT for SQL-SERVER similarly you can use
ROWNUM or FETCH FIRST for ORACLE -- Do search for this, it quite easy to use
LIMIT for MYSQL -- Do search for this, it quite easy to use
SET ROWCOUNT 1
SELECT * FROM <table name> ORDER BY [id] DESC
Assuming tableID is the surrogate key implemented as an autonumber/autoincrement
SELECT TOP 1 FROM tTable Order by tableID DESC
There is no way to do this. Relational databases are not required to keep their rows in any particular order... So, there's no way of knowing which row is physically stored last. You'll need to use the ORDER BY.
You might be able to improve performance with some appropriate indexes. This sort of thing should be pretty fast with an index.
Related
I want to fire a Query "SELECT * FROM TABLE" but select only from row N+1. Any idea on how to do this?
For SQL Server 2012 and above, use this:
SELECT *
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
ORDER BY OrderDate
OFFSET (#Skip) ROWS FETCH NEXT (#Take) ROWS ONLY
https://stackoverflow.com/a/19669165/1883345
SQL Server:
select * from table
except
select top N * from table
Oracle up to 11.2:
select * from table
minus
select * from table where rownum <= N
with TableWithNum as (
select t.*, rownum as Num
from Table t
)
select * from TableWithNum where Num > N
Oracle 12.1 and later (following standard ANSI SQL)
select *
from table
order by some_column
offset x rows
fetch first y rows only
They may meet your needs more or less.
There is no direct way to do what you want by SQL.
However, it is not a design flaw, in my opinion.
SQL is not supposed to be used like this.
In relational databases, a table represents a relation, which is a set by definition. A set contains unordered elements.
Also, don't rely on the physical order of the records. The row order is not guaranteed by the RDBMS.
If the ordering of the records is important, you'd better add a column such as `Num' to the table, and use the following query. This is more natural.
select *
from Table
where Num > N
order by Num
Query: in sql-server
DECLARE #N INT = 5 --Any random number
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY ID) AS RoNum
, ID --Add any fields needed here (or replace ID by *)
FROM TABLE_NAME
) AS tbl
WHERE #N < RoNum
ORDER BY tbl.ID
This will give rows of Table, where rownumber is starting from #N + 1.
In order to do this in SQL Server, you must order the query by a column, so you can specify the rows you want.
Example:
select * from table order by [some_column]
offset 10 rows
FETCH NEXT 10 rows only
Do you want something like in LINQ skip 5 and take 10?
SELECT TOP(10) * FROM MY_TABLE
WHERE ID not in (SELECT TOP(5) ID From My_TABLE ORDER BY ID)
ORDER BY ID;
This approach will work in any SQL version. You need to stablish some order (by Id for example) so all rows are provided in a predictable manner.
I know it's quite late now to answer the query. But I have a little different solution than the others which I believe has better performance because no comparisons are performed in the SQL query only sorting is done. You can see its considerable performance improvement basically when value of SKIP is LARGE enough.
Best performance but only for SQL Server 2012 and above. Originally from #Majid Basirati's answer which is worth mentioning again.
DECLARE #Skip INT = 2, #Take INT = 2
SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME
ORDER BY ID ASC
OFFSET (#Skip) ROWS FETCH NEXT (#Take) ROWS ONLY
Not as Good as the first one but compatible with SQL Server 2005 and above.
DECLARE #Skip INT = 2, #Take INT = 2
SELECT * FROM
(
SELECT TOP (#Take) * FROM
(
SELECT TOP (#Take + #Skip) * FROM TABLE_NAME
ORDER BY ID ASC
) T1
ORDER BY ID DESC
) T2
ORDER BY ID ASC
What about this:
SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 50 OFFSET 1
This works with all DBRM/SQL, it is standard ANSI:
SELECT *
FROM owner.tablename A
WHERE condition
AND n+1 <= (
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT b.column_order)
FROM owner.tablename B
WHERE condition
AND b.column_order>a.column_order
)
ORDER BY a.column_order DESC
PostgreSQL: OFFSET without LIMIT
This syntax is supported, and it is in my opinion the cleanest API compared to other SQL implementations as it does not introduce any new keywords:
SELECT * FROM mytable ORDER BY mycol ASC OFFSET 1
that should definitely be standardized.
The fact that this is allowed can be seen from: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/sql-select.html since LIMIT and OFFSET can be given independently, since OFFSET is not a sub-clause of LIMIT in the syntax specification:
[ LIMIT { count | ALL } ]
[ OFFSET start [ ROW | ROWS ] ]
SQLite: negative limit
OFFSET requires LIMIT in that DBMS, but dummy negative values mean no limit. Not as nice as PostgreSQL, but it works:
SELECT * FROM mytable ORDER BY mycol ASC LIMIT -1 OFFSET 1
Asked at: SQLite with skip (offset) only (not limit)
Documented at: https://sqlite.org/lang_select.html
If the LIMIT expression evaluates to a negative value, then there is no upper bound on the number of rows returned.
MySQL: use a huge limit number
Terrible API design, the documentation actually recommends it:
SELECT * FROM tbl LIMIT 1,18446744073709551615;
Asked at: MySQL skip first 10 results
Node.js Sequelize ORM implements it
That ORM allows e.g. findAll({offset: without limit:, and implements workarounds such as the ones mentioned above for each different DBMS.
In Faircom SQL (which is a pseudo MySQL), i can do this in a super simple SQL Statement, just as follows:
SELECT SKIP 10 * FROM TABLE ORDER BY Id
Obviously you can just replace 10 with any declared variable of your desire.
I don't have access to MS SQL or other platforms, but I'll be really surprised MS SQL doesn't support something like this.
DECLARE #Skip int= 2, #Take int= 2
SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME
ORDER BY Column_Name
OFFSET (#Skip) ROWS FETCH NEXT (#Take) ROWS ONLY
try below query it's work
SELECT * FROM `my_table` WHERE id != (SELECT id From my_table LIMIT 1)
Hope this will help
You can also use OFFSET to remove the 1st record from your query result like this-
Example - find the second max salary from the employee table
select distinct salary from employee order by salary desc limit 1 OFFSET 1
For SQL Server 2012 and later versions, the best method is #MajidBasirati's answer.
I also loved #CarlosToledo's answer, it's not limited to any SQL Server version but it's missing Order By Clauses. Without them, it may return wrong results.
For SQL Server 2008 and later I would use Common Table Expressions for better performance.
-- This example omits first 10 records and select next 5 records
;WITH MyCTE(Id) as
(
SELECT TOP (10) Id
FROM MY_TABLE
ORDER BY Id
)
SELECT TOP (5) *
FROM MY_TABLE
INNER JOIN MyCTE ON (MyCTE.Id <> MY_TABLE.Id)
ORDER BY Id
While using SELECT TOP 5 * FROM SOMETABLE gives me an error
ORA-00923: FROM keyword not found where expected
I am using Oracle 11g . I am aware of using rownum for doing the same thing but just wondering SQL TOP usage is not at all supported in Oracle ? Anything need to do extra to make SQL TOP working in Oracle ??
Oracle does not support TOP. Use ROWNUM
SELECT * FROM your_table
WHERE ROWNUM <= 5
SQLFiddle example
No, Oracle does not support TOP.
As you point out, the best approach is to use rownum. Another option is the analytical function ROW_NUMBER.
The rownum keyword, while it gets you the said no. of records, does so only after applying the order by clause if you have one.
So if the SQL server query is as below, it will give you 10 most recently created records.
Select TOP 10 * from mytable order by created_date desc
But to fit Oracle, when you write this, it gets you the 10 records (that may not be the most recent ones) and arranges them in descending order, which is not what you wanted.
Select * from mytable where rownum < 10 order by created_date desc
So writing with an additional select like this would help:
SELECT * FROM (Select * from mytable order by created_date desc) where rownum < 10
SQL TOP does NOT work for Oracle.
I have a table with n number of records
How can i retrieve the nth record and (n-1)th record from my table in SQL without using derived table ?
I have tried using ROWID as
select * from table where rowid in (select max(rowid) from table);
It is giving the nth record but i want the (n-1)th record also .
And is there any other method other than using max,derived table and pseudo columns
Thanks
You cannot depend on rowid to get you to the last row in the table. You need an auto-incrementing id or creation time to have the proper ordering.
You can use, for instance:
select *
from (select t.*, row_number() over (order by <id> desc) as seqnum
from t
) t
where seqnum <= 2
Although allowed in the syntax, the order by clause in a subquery is ignored (for instance http://docs.oracle.com/javadb/10.8.2.2/ref/rrefsqlj13658.html).
Just to be clear, rowids have nothing to do with the ordering of rows in a table. The Oracle documentation is quite clear that they specify a physical access path for the data (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28318/datatype.htm#i6732). It is true that in an empty database, inserting records into a newtable will probably create a monotonically increasing sequence of row ids. But you cannot depend on this. The only guarantees with rowids are that they are unique within a table and are the fastest way to access a particular row.
I have to admit that I cannot find good documentation on Oracle handling or not handling order by's in subqueries in its most recent versions. ANSI SQL does not require compliant databases to support order by in subqueries. Oracle syntax allows it, and it seems to work in some cases, at least. My best guess is that it would probably work on a single processor, single threaded instance of Oracle, or if the data access is through an index. Once parallelism is introduced, the results would probably not be ordered. Since I started using Oracle (in the mid-1990s), I have been under the impression that order bys in subqueries are generally ignored. My advice would be to not depend on the functionality, until Oracle clearly states that it is supported.
select * from (select * from my_table order by rowid) where rownum <= 2
and for rows between N and M:
select * from (
select * from (
select * from my_table order by rowid
) where rownum <= M
) where rownum >= N
Try this
select top 2 * from table order by rowid desc
Assuming rowid as column in your table:
SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY rowid DESC LIMIT 2
What is the most efficient way to read the last row with SQL Server?
The table is indexed on a unique key -- the "bottom" key values represent the last row.
If you're using MS SQL, you can try:
SELECT TOP 1 * FROM table_Name ORDER BY unique_column DESC
select whatever,columns,you,want from mytable
where mykey=(select max(mykey) from mytable);
You'll need some sort of uniquely identifying column in your table, like an auto-filling primary key or a datetime column (preferably the primary key). Then you can do this:
SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY unique_column DESC LIMIT 1
The ORDER BY column tells it to rearange the results according to that column's data, and the DESC tells it to reverse the results (thus putting the last one first). After that, the LIMIT 1 tells it to only pass back one row.
If some of your id are in order, i am assuming there will be some order in your db
SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE ID = (SELECT MAX(ID) FROM TABLE)
I think below query will work for SQL Server with maximum performance without any sortable column
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE ID not in (SELECT TOP (SELECT COUNT(1)-1
FROM table)
ID
FROM table)
Hope you have understood it... :)
I tried using last in sql query in SQl server 2008 but it gives this err:
" 'last' is not a recognized built-in function name."
So I ended up using :
select max(WorkflowStateStatusId) from WorkflowStateStatus
to get the Id of the last row.
One could also use
Declare #i int
set #i=1
select WorkflowStateStatusId from Workflow.WorkflowStateStatus
where WorkflowStateStatusId not in (select top (
(select count(*) from Workflow.WorkflowStateStatus) - #i ) WorkflowStateStatusId from .WorkflowStateStatus)
You can use last_value: SELECT LAST_VALUE(column) OVER (PARTITION BY column ORDER BY column)...
I test it at one of my databases and it worked as expected.
You can also check de documentation here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh231517.aspx
OFFSET and FETCH NEXT are a feature of SQL Server 2012 to achieve SQL paging while displaying results.
The OFFSET argument is used to decide the starting row to return rows from a result and FETCH argument is used to return a set of number of rows.
SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY unique_column desc
OFFSET 0 Row
FETCH NEXT 1 ROW ONLY
SELECT TOP 1 id from comission_fees ORDER BY id DESC
In order to retrieve the last row of a table for MS SQL database 2005, You can use the following query:
select top 1 column_name from table_name order by column_name desc;
Note: To get the first row of the table for MS SQL database 2005, You can use the following query:
select top 1 column_name from table_name;
If you don't have any ordered column, you can use the physical id of each lines:
SELECT top 1 sys.fn_PhysLocFormatter(%%physloc%%) AS [File:Page:Slot],
T.*
FROM MyTable As T
order by sys.fn_PhysLocFormatter(%%physloc%%) DESC
SELECT * from Employees where [Employee ID] = ALL (SELECT MAX([Employee ID]) from Employees)
This is how you get the last record and update a field in Access DB.
UPDATE compalints SET tkt = addzone &'-'& customer_code &'-'& sn where sn in (select max(sn) from compalints )
If you have a Replicated table, you can have an Identity=1000 in localDatabase and Identity=2000 in the clientDatabase, so if you catch the last ID you may find always the last from client, not the last from the current connected database.
So the best method which returns the last connected database is:
SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('tablename')
Well I'm not getting the "last value" in a table, I'm getting the Last value per financial instrument. It's not the same but I guess it is relevant for some that are looking to look up on "how it is done now". I also used RowNumber() and CTE's and before that to simply take 1 and order by [column] desc. however we nolonger need to...
I am using SQL server 2017, we are recording all ticks on all exchanges globally, we have ~12 billion ticks a day, we store each Bid, ask, and trade including the volumes and the attributes of a tick (bid, ask, trade) of any of the given exchanges.
We have 253 types of ticks data for any given contract (mostly statistics) in that table, the last traded price is tick type=4 so, when we need to get the "last" of Price we use :
select distinct T.contractId,
LAST_VALUE(t.Price)over(partition by t.ContractId order by created ROWS BETWEEN CURRENT ROW AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING)
from [dbo].[Tick] as T
where T.TickType=4
You can see the execution plan on my dev system it executes quite efficient, executes in 4 sec while the exchange import ETL is pumping data into the table, there will be some locking slowing me down... that's just how live systems work.
It is very simple
select top 10 * from TableName order by 1 desc
SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE ID = (SELECT MAX(ID) FROM TABLE)
I am pretty sure that it is:
SELECT last(column_name) FROM table
Becaause I use something similar:
SELECT last(id) FROM Status
What's the best way to delete all rows from a table in sql but to keep n number of rows on the top?
DELETE FROM Table WHERE ID NOT IN (SELECT TOP 10 ID FROM Table)
Edit:
Chris brings up a good performance hit since the TOP 10 query would be run for each row. If this is a one time thing, then it may not be as big of a deal, but if it is a common thing, then I did look closer at it.
I would select ID column(s) the set of rows that you want to keep into a temp table or table variable. Then delete all the rows that do not exist in the temp table. The syntax mentioned by another user:
DELETE FROM Table WHERE ID NOT IN (SELECT TOP 10 ID FROM Table)
Has a potential problem. The "SELECT TOP 10" query will be executed for each row in the table, which could be a huge performance hit. You want to avoid making the same query over and over again.
This syntax should work, based what you listed as your original SQL statement:
create table #nuke(NukeID int)
insert into #nuke(Nuke) select top 1000 id from article
delete article where not exists (select 1 from nuke where Nukeid = id)
drop table #nuke
Future reference for those of use who don't use MS SQL.
In PostgreSQL use ORDER BY and LIMIT instead of TOP.
DELETE FROM table
WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT id FROM table ORDER BY id LIMIT n);
MySQL -- well...
Error -- This version of MySQL does not yet support 'LIMIT &
IN/ALL/ANY/SOME subquery'
Not yet I guess.
Here is how I did it. This method is faster and simpler:
Delete all but top n from database table in MS SQL using OFFSET command
WITH CTE AS
(
SELECT ID
FROM dbo.TableName
ORDER BY ID DESC
OFFSET 11 ROWS
)
DELETE CTE;
Replace ID with column by which you want to sort.
Replace number after OFFSET with number of rows which you want to keep.
Choose DESC or ASC - whatever suits your case.
I think using a virtual table would be much better than an IN-clause or temp table.
DELETE
Product
FROM
Product
LEFT OUTER JOIN
(
SELECT TOP 10
Product.id
FROM
Product
) TopProducts ON Product.id = TopProducts.id
WHERE
TopProducts.id IS NULL
This really is going to be language specific, but I would likely use something like the following for SQL server.
declare #n int
SET #n = SELECT Count(*) FROM dTABLE;
DELETE TOP (#n - 10 ) FROM dTable
if you don't care about the exact number of rows, there is always
DELETE TOP 90 PERCENT FROM dTABLE;
I don't know about other flavors but MySQL DELETE allows LIMIT.
If you could order things so that the n rows you want to keep are at the bottom, then you could do a DELETE FROM table LIMIT tablecount-n.
Edit
Oooo. I think I like Cory Foy's answer better, assuming it works in your case. My way feels a little clunky by comparison.
I would solve it using the technique below. The example expect an article table with an id on each row.
Delete article where id not in (select top 1000 id from article)
Edit: Too slow to answer my own question ...
Refactored?
Delete a From Table a Inner Join (
Select Top (Select Count(tableID) From Table) - 10)
From Table Order By tableID Desc
) b On b.tableID = A.tableID
edit: tried them both in the query analyzer, current answer is fasted (damn order by...)
Better way would be to insert the rows you DO want into another table, drop the original table and then rename the new table so it has the same name as the old table
I've got a trick to avoid executing the TOP expression for every row. We can combine TOP with MAX to get the MaxId we want to keep. Then we just delete everything greater than MaxId.
-- Declare Variable to hold the highest id we want to keep.
DECLARE #MaxId as int = (
SELECT MAX(temp.ID)
FROM (SELECT TOP 10 ID FROM table ORDER BY ID ASC) temp
)
-- Delete anything greater than MaxId. If MaxId is null, there is nothing to delete.
IF #MaxId IS NOT NULL
DELETE FROM table WHERE ID > #MaxId
Note: It is important to use ORDER BY when declaring MaxId to ensure proper results are queried.