Related
For example, I have a table:
User ID(int) | Card ID(int) | Deck(int)
1841 | 14 | 1
1841 | 14 | 1
it is defined that the int values in deck column would always take on 1 or 2 as a value(1 indicating that it is in the deck). and card ID is not unique for a user(this indicate that a user have 2 card 14) , as shown in the example above. what if i want to remove one card 14 in the deck and the other would remain. what is the proper sql command, i tried UPDATE but it
you can define limit at the end of update query
update [table name] set Deck=2 where User_ID=1841 and Card_id=14 limit 1;
Basically you're missing a way of referencing any single particular row. Depending how critical to the application is need for such reference, it is almost always bad idea to allow such situation. There are many solutions for this, for example
1) Every row usually contains unique OID or ROWID field , which is not displayed with "SELECT * FROM TABLE", but can be used if requested implicitly. Depending on what database engine you use, e.g. with PostgreSQL try
SELECT OID, * FROM TABLE WHERE OID = 'somevalue'
this is usually used if you don't want to enforce UNIQUE on the table, but rather deal with possible mistaken input later if it will unfortunately appear.
2) You can add ID column, for example autoincremental ( refer to DB manual ), and then update it to contain unique IDs
ALTER TABLE table_name ADD column_name column-definition;
3) You can use self incrementing "running total", eg. with MySQL it looks more/less like this:
SET #runtot:=0;
SELECT *, (#runtot := #runtot + 1) AS rt FROM table WHERE rt='somevalue'
(this will do calculation every time so probably will be inefficient )
4) You can use LIMIT as explained in previous answer
5) You can JOIN some another table with unique IDs and possibly update resulting relation, or combine some query to create and use static VIEW
6) You can use SELECT with some dynamically allocated value, for example RAND() or NOW() or similar. It probably won't create unique identifiers across whole table, depending what function you'll use and how you will use it
7) combine two or more above solutions altogether
..and probably many other solutions. Anyway usually there's some "Id" column used with some UNIQUE constraint.
I'm designing a db in PostgreSQL that primarily stores info about different people. I'd like to associate a log with each person, consisting of the date and a text entry. Logs can have arbitrary numbers of entries. Here's the ideas I've toyed with:
What I think I want is a log_table like this:
person_id | row_num | row_date | row_text
-----------------------------------------
1 | 1 | 01/01/12 | Blah...
2 | 1 | 01/02/12 | Foo...
1 | 2 | 01/04/12 | Bar...
But I don't know how to get row_num to increment properly; it should default to one more than the largest current row_num for that person_id. In other words, the row_nums for a given person_id should be sequential.
Or I can just have row_num increment regardless of person_id so that every log entry has a distinct row number. But it doesn't seem very satisfying to have person_id 1's log jump from row 1 to row 3, and this could also make errors hard to spot.
My last idea is to include the log directly in the person table, by making a composite type log_entry = (date, text). Then a column log in the person table can store an array:
person_id | name | log
----------------------
1 | Bob | {(01/01/12, Blah...), (01/04/12, Bar...)}
But this seems cumbersome.
So my questions are, a) which solution if any is good design; b) any way to solve the auto-incrementing problem for solution 1? If it matters, this is a small db for personal use; I want good structure but it's highly likely I'll be the only user. Thanks so much for any help!
Why don't you use a timestamp to store the time when the row has been inserted?
That way you don't need the extra row_num column in the table, and you can always "calculate" it on the fly:
SELECT person_id,
row_number() over (partition by person_id order by row_timestamp) as row_num,
row_timestamp,
row_text
FROM log_table
Of course if there are chances that a user generates more than one entry per micro second that you might wind up with log entries with exactly the same timestamp.
But even in a busy system this is quite unlikely (but not impossible).
If you can't (or don't want to to) use a timestamp, you can always use a sequence that increments for all users and then use the row_number() function to generate a gapless row number during retrieval (as shown above, just use an order by on the column populated by the sequence).
I have an access table with an automatic primary key, a date, and other data. The first record starts at 36, due to deleted records. I want to change all the primary keys so they begin at 1 and increment, ordered by the date. Whats the best way to do this?
I want to change the table from this:
| TestID | Date | Data |
| 36 | 12/02/09 | .54 |
| 37 | 12/04/09 | .52 |
To this:
| TestID | Date | Data |
| 1 | 12/02/09 | .54 |
| 2 | 12/04/09 | .52 |
EDIT: Thanks for the input and those who answered. I think some were reading a little too much into my question, which is okay because it still adds to my learning and thinking process. The purpose of my question was two fold: 1) It would simply be nicer for me to have the PK match with the order of my data's dates and 2) to learn if something like this was possible for later use. Such as, if I want to add a new column to the table which numbers the tests, labels the type of test, etc. I am trying to learn a lot at once right now so I get a little confused where to start sometimes. I am building .NET apps and trying to learn SQL and database management and it is sometimes confusing finding the right info with the different RDMS's and ways to interact with them.
Following from MikeW, you can use the following SQL command to copy the data from the old to the new table:
INSERT
TestID, Date, Data
INTO
NewTable
SELECT
TestID, Date, Data
FROM
OldTable;
The new TestID will start from 1 if you use an AutoIncrement field.
I would create a new table, with autoincrement.
Then select all the existing data into it, ordering by date. That will result in the IDs being recreated from "1".
Then you could drop the original table, and rename the new one.
Assuming no foreign keys - if so you'd have to drop and recreate those too.
An Autonumber used as a surrogate primary keys is not data, but metadata used to do nothing but connect records in related tables. If you need to control the values in that field, then it's data, and you can't use an Autonumber, but have to roll your own autoincrement routine. You might want to look at this thread for a starting point, but code for this for use in Access is available everywhere Access programmers congregate on the Net.
I agree that the value of the auto-generated IDENTITY values should have no meaning, even for the coder, but for education purposes, here's how to reseed the IDENTITY using ADO:
ACC2000: Cannot Change Default Seed and Increment Value in UI
Note the article as out of date because it says, "there are no options available in the user interface (UI) for you to make this change." In later version the Access, the SQL DLL could be executed when in ANSI-92 Query Mode e.g. something like this:
ALTER TABLE MyTable ALTER TestID INTEGER IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL;
Is it possible to reorder rows in SQL database?
For example; how can I swap the order of 2nd row and 3rd row's values?
The order of the row is important to me since i need to display the value according to the order.
Thanks for all the answers. But 'Order by' won't work for me.
For example, I put a list of bookmarks in database.
I want to display based on the result I get from query. (not in alphabet order). Just when they are inserted.
But user may re-arrange the position of the bookmark (in any way he/she wants). So I can't use 'order by'.
An example is how the bookmark display in the bookmark in firefox. User can switch position easily. How can I mention that in DB?
Thank you.
It sounds like you need another column like "ListOrder". So your table might look like:
BookMark ListOrder
======== =========
d 1
g 2
b 3
f 4
a 5
Then you can "order by" ListOrder.
Select * from MyTable Order By ListOrder
If the user can only move a bookmark one place at a time, you can use integers as the ListOrder, and swap them. For example, if the user wants to move "f" up one row:
Update MyTable
Set ListOrder=ListOrder+1
Where ListOrder=(Select ListOrder-1 From MyTable where BookMark='f')
Update MyTable
Set ListOrder=ListOrder-1
Where BookMark='f'
If the user can move a bookmark up or down many rows at once, then you need to reorder a segment. For example, if the user wants to move "f" to the top of the list, you need to:
if (increment) {
update MyTable
Set ListOrder=ListOrder-1
where ListOrder<=1 -- The New position
and ListOrder >(Select ListOrder from MyTable where BookMark='f')
} else {
update MyTable
Set ListOrder=ListOrder+1
where ListOrder>=1 -- The New position
and ListOrder <(Select ListOrder from MyTable where BookMark='f')
}
update MyTable
Set ListOrder=1 -- The New Position
Where Bookmark='f'
As others have mentioned, it's not a good idea to depend on the physical order of the database table. Relational tables are conceptually more like unordered sets than ordered lists. Assuming a certain physical order may lead to unpredictable results.
Sounds like what you need is a separate column that stores the user's preferred sort order. But you'll still need to do something in your query to display the results in that order.
It is possible to specify the physical order of records in a database by creating a clustered index, but that is not something you'd want to do on an arbitrary user-specified basis. And it may still lead to unexpected results.
Use ORDER BY in your SELECT query. For example, to order by a user's last name, use:
SELECT * FROM User ORDER BY LastName
The order of the rows on the actual database should not matter.
You should use the ORDER BY clause in your queries to order them as you need.
Databases can store the data in any way they want. Using the "order by" clause is the only way to guarantee an ordering of the data. In your bookmark example, you could have an integer field that indicates the ordering, and then update that field as a user moves things around. Then ORDER BY that column to get things in the right order.
A little late to the party, but anyone still looking for an answer to this problem, you need to use the Stern-Brocot technique.
Here's an article explaining the theory behind it
For each item you need to store a numerator and denominator. Then you can also add a computed column which is the division of both. Each time you move an item inbetween 2 others, the item's numerator becomes the sum of both neighboring numerators, and the item's denominator becomes the sum of both neighboring denominators.
These numbers won't skyrocket as fast as with the "averaging" method, where you lose all accuracy after 17 swaps.
I also created a demo where the method is implemented.
I have a solution for this that I have used a few times. I keep an extra field "sort_order" in the table, and update this when reordering. I've used this in cases when I have some sort of containers with items, and the order of the items should be editable inside the container. When reordering, I only update the sort_order for the items in the current container, which means not to many (usually in practice only a few) rows have to be updated.
In short, I do the following:
add a sort_order field to the items table
when inserting a new row, I set sort_order=id
when reordering (needs id of item to move, and id of item to insert after):
select id, sort_order from items where container = ID order by sort_order
split the id and sort_order from rows in two arrays
remove the id of the item to move from the id-list
insert the id of the item to move after the id of the item to insert after
merge the list of ids and the list of sort_order into a two dimensional array, as [[id, sort_order], [id2, sort_order], ...]
run update item set sort_order=SORT_ORDER where id=ID (executemany) with merged list
(If moving item to another container, after updating "container foreign key" move first or last depending on app.)
(If the update involves a large number of items, I do not think this solution is a good approach.)
I have made an example using python and mysql on http://wannapy.blogspot.com/2010/11/reorder-rows-in-sql-database.html (copy and try it) along with some extra explanations.
I guess a simple order by would be what you're looking for?
select my_column from my_table order by my_order_column;
As others have stated use an order by.
Never depend on the order data exists in a physical table, always base it of the data you are working with, be it one or more key fields.
First, let me agree with everyone here that the order in the table shouldn't matter. Use a separate [SortOrder] column that you update and include an Order By clause.
That said, SQL Server databases do allow for a single "clustered index" on a table that will actually force the position in the underlying table storage. Primarily useful if you have a big dataset and always query by something specific.
Add a position column to your table and store as a simple integer.
If you need to support multiple users or lists, your best bet is to create a bookmarks table, an users table and a table to link them.
bookmarks: id,url
users: id,name
users_bookmarks: user_id, bookmark_id, position, date_created
Assuming date_created is populated when inserting rows you can get secondary list ordering based on date.
select bookmark_id from users_bookmarks where user_id = 1 order by position, date_created;
At times like this, I am reminded of a quote from the Matrix: "Do not try and order the database. That's impossible. Instead, only realize the truth... there is no order. Then you will see that it the table that orders itself, it is you who orders the table."
When working with MySQL through a GUI, there is always a decision to make. If you run something like SELECT * FROM users, MySql will always make a decision to order this by some field. Normally, this will be the primary key.
+----------------
| id | name |
-----------------
| 1 | Brian |
| 2 | Carl |
| 3 | Albert |
-----------------
When you add an ORDER BY command to the query, it will make the decision to order by some other field.
For Example Select * From users ORDER BY name would yield:
+----------------
| id | name |
-----------------
| 3 | Albert |
| 1 | Brian |
| 2 | Carl |
-----------------
So to your question, you appear to want to change the default order by which your table displays this information. In order to do that, check to see what your Primary Key field
is. For most practical purposes, having a unique identifying natural number tends to do the trick. MySQL has an AUTO_INCREMENT function for this. When creating the table, it would look something like field_name int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT.
All of this is to say: if you would like to change "the row order", you would need to update this value. However, since the identifier is something that other tables would use to reference your field, this seems a little bit reckless.
If you for example went: UPDATE table Set id = 1 where id = 2;, this would initially fail, since the id fields would end up being both an identical value and fail the PrimaryKey check (which insists on both uniqueness and having a value set). You could Juggle this by running three update statements in a row:
UPDATE users Set id = 100000000 where id = 1;
UPDATE users Set id = 1 where id = 2;
UPDATE users Set id = 2 where id = 100000000;
This would result in the rows for this table looking like:
+----------------
| id | name |
-----------------
| 1 | Carl |
| 2 | Brian |
| 3 | Albert |
----------------+
Which technically would work to reorder this table, but this is in a bubble. MySQL being a relational database means that any table which was depending on that data to be consistent will now be pointed to the wrong data. For example, I have a table which stores birthdays, referencing the initial user table. It's structure might look like this:
+----------------------------+
| id | user_id | birthdate |
+----------------------------+
| 1 | 1 | 1993-01-01 |
| 1 | 2 | 1980-02-03 |
| 1 | 3 | 1955-01-01 |
+----------------------------+
By switching the ID's on the user table, you MUST update the user_id value on the birthdays table. Of course MySQL comes prepared for this: enter "Foreign Key Constraints". As long as you configured all of your foreign key constraints to Cascade Updates, you wouldn't need to manually change the reference to every value you changed.
These queries would all be a lot of manual work and potentially weaken your data's integrity. If you have fields you would like to rank and reorder regularly, the answer posed by Mike Lewis on this question with the "table order" would be a more sensible answer (and if that is the case, then his is the best solution and just disregard this answer).
In response to your post here, the answer you may be looking for is:
To order chronologically, add a DateAdded or similar column with a datetime or smalldatetime datatype.
On all methods that insert into the database, make sure you insert CURRENT_TIMESTAMP in the DateAdded column.
On methods that query the database, add ORDER BY DateAdded at the end of the query string.
NEVER rely on the physical position in the database system. It may work MOST of the time but definitely not ALL of the time.
The question lacks any detail that would let anyone give you correct answer. Clearly you could read the records into memory and then update them. But this is bad on so many different levels.
The issue is like this. Depending on the schema that is actually implemented there is logic to the way that the records are physically written to disk. Sometimes they are written in order of insert and other times they are inserted with space between blocks (see extents).
So changing the physical order is not likely without swapping column data; and this has a deep effect on the various indices. You are left having to change the logical order.
As I read your update... I'm left to understand that you may have multiple users and each user is to have bookmarks that they want ordered. Looks like you need a second table that acts as an intersection between the user and the bookmark. Then all you need is an inner join and an order by.
But there is not enough information to offer a complete solution.
Here is a stored procedure script to increment or decrement (one at a time) in MySQL.
Note, MySQL doesn't allow you to select in the same query you're updating so the above answers don't work.
I have also set it to return an error if there is no item above / below if you're incrementing / decrementing, respectively.
DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE `spReorderSequenceItems` (
IN _SequenceItemId INT,
IN _SequenceId INT,
IN IncrementUp TINYINT,
OUT Error VARCHAR(255)
)
BEGIN
DECLARE CurrentPosition INT;
SELECT Position INTO CurrentPosition
FROM tblSequenceItems
WHERE SequenceItemId = _SequenceItemId;
IF IncrementUp = 1 THEN
IF (
SELECT Position
FROM tblSequenceItems
WHERE Position = CurrentPosition + 1 AND SequenceId = _SequenceId
) THEN
UPDATE tblSequenceItems
SET Position = Position - 1
WHERE Position = CurrentPosition + 1 AND SequenceId = _SequenceId;
UPDATE tblSequenceItems
SET Position = Position + 1
WHERE SequenceItemId = _SequenceItemId;
ELSE
SELECT 'No Item Above' AS _Error INTO Error;
END IF;
ELSE
IF (
SELECT Position
FROM tblSequenceItems
WHERE Position = CurrentPosition - 1 AND SequenceId = _SequenceId
) THEN
UPDATE tblSequenceItems
SET Position = Position + 1
WHERE Position = CurrentPosition - 1 AND SequenceId = _SequenceId;
UPDATE tblSequenceItems
SET Position = Position - 1
WHERE SequenceItemId = _SequenceItemId;
ELSE
SELECT 'No Item Below' AS _Error INTO Error;
END IF;
END IF;
END
$$
DELIMITER ;
Call it with
CALL spReorderSequenceItems(1, 1, 1, #Error);
SELECT #Error;
I've written PL/SQL code to denormalize a table into a much-easer-to-query form. The code uses a temporary table to do some of its work, merging some rows from the original table together.
The logic is written as a pipelined table function, following the pattern from the linked article. The table function uses a PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION declaration to permit the temporary table manipulation, and also accepts a cursor input parameter to restrict the denormalization to certain ID values.
I then created a view to query the table function, passing in all possible ID values as a cursor (other uses of the function will be more restrictive).
My question: is this all really necessary? Have I completely missed a much more simple way of accomplishing the same thing?
Every time I touch PL/SQL I get the impression that I'm typing way too much.
Update: I'll add a sketch of the table I'm dealing with to give everyone an idea of the denormalization that I'm talking about. The table stores a history of employee jobs, each with an activation row, and (possibly) a termination row. It's possible for an employee to have multiple simultaneous jobs, as well as the same job over and over again in non-contiguous date ranges. For example:
| EMP_ID | JOB_ID | STATUS | EFF_DATE | other columns...
| 1 | 10 | A | 10-JAN-2008 |
| 2 | 11 | A | 13-JAN-2008 |
| 1 | 12 | A | 20-JAN-2008 |
| 2 | 11 | T | 01-FEB-2008 |
| 1 | 10 | T | 02-FEB-2008 |
| 2 | 11 | A | 20-FEB-2008 |
Querying that to figure out who is working when in what job is non-trivial. So, my denormalization function populates the temporary table with just the date ranges for each job, for any EMP_IDs passed in though the cursor. Passing in EMP_IDs 1 and 2 would produce the following:
| EMP_ID | JOB_ID | START_DATE | END_DATE |
| 1 | 10 | 10-JAN-2008 | 02-FEB-2008 |
| 2 | 11 | 13-JAN-2008 | 01-FEB-2008 |
| 1 | 12 | 20-JAN-2008 | |
| 2 | 11 | 20-FEB-2008 | |
(END_DATE allows NULLs for jobs that don't have a predetermined termination date.)
As you can imagine, this denormalized form is much, much easier to query, but creating it--so far as I can tell--requires a temporary table to store the intermediate results (e.g., job records for which the activation row has been found, but not the termination...yet). Using the pipelined table function to populate the temporary table and then return its rows is the only way I've figured out how to do it.
I think a way to approach this is to use analytic functions...
I set up your test case using:
create table employee_job (
emp_id integer,
job_id integer,
status varchar2(1 char),
eff_date date
);
insert into employee_job values (1,10,'A',to_date('10-JAN-2008','DD-MON-YYYY'));
insert into employee_job values (2,11,'A',to_date('13-JAN-2008','DD-MON-YYYY'));
insert into employee_job values (1,12,'A',to_date('20-JAN-2008','DD-MON-YYYY'));
insert into employee_job values (2,11,'T',to_date('01-FEB-2008','DD-MON-YYYY'));
insert into employee_job values (1,10,'T',to_date('02-FEB-2008','DD-MON-YYYY'));
insert into employee_job values (2,11,'A',to_date('20-FEB-2008','DD-MON-YYYY'));
commit;
I've used the lead function to get the next date and then wrapped it all as a sub-query just to get the "A" records and add the end date if there is one.
select
emp_id,
job_id,
eff_date start_date,
decode(next_status,'T',next_eff_date,null) end_date
from
(
select
emp_id,
job_id,
eff_date,
status,
lead(eff_date,1,null) over (partition by emp_id, job_id order by eff_date, status) next_eff_date,
lead(status,1,null) over (partition by emp_id, job_id order by eff_date, status) next_status
from
employee_job
)
where
status = 'A'
order by
start_date,
emp_id,
job_id
I'm sure there's some use cases I've missed but you get the idea. Analytic functions are your friend :)
EMP_ID JOB_ID START_DATE END_DATE
1 10 10-JAN-2008 02-FEB-2008
2 11 13-JAN-2008 01-FEB-2008
2 11 20-FEB-2008
1 12 20-JAN-2008
Rather than having the input parameter as a cursor, I would have a table variable (don't know if Oracle has such a thing I'm a TSQL guy) or populate another temp table with the ID values and join on it in the view/function or wherever you need to.
The only time for cursors in my honest opinion is when you have to loop. And when you have to loop I always recommend to do that outside of the database in the application logic.
It sounds like you are giving away some read consistency here ie: it will be possible for the contents of your temporary table to be out of sync with the source data, if you have concurrent modification data modification.
Without knowing the requirements, nor complexity of what you want to achieve. I would attempt
to define a view, containing (possibly complex) logic in SQL, else I'd add some PL/SQL to the mix with;
A pipelined table function, but using an SQL collection type (instead of the temporary table ). A simple example is here: http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:4447489221109
Number 2 would give you less moving parts and solve your consistency issue.
Mathew Butler
The real problem here is the "write-only" table design - by which I mean, it's easy to insert data into it, but tricky and inefficient to get useful information out of it! Your "temporary" table has the structure the "permanent" table should have had in the first place.
Could you perhaps do this:
Create a permanent table with the better structure
Populate it to match the data in the first table
Define a database trigger on the original table to keep the new table in sync from now on
Then you can just select from the new table to perform your reporting.
I couldn't agree with you more, HollyStyles. I also used to be a TSQL guy, and find some of Oracle's idiosyncrasies more than a little perplexing. Unfortunately, temp tables aren't as convenient in Oracle, and in this case, other existing SQL logic is expecting to directly query a table, so I give it this view instead. There's really no application logic that exists outside of the database in this system.
Oracle developers do seem to use cursors much more eagerly than I would have thought. Given the bondage & discipline nature of PL/SQL, that's all the more surprising.
The simplest solution is:
Create a global temporary table containing just IDs you need:
CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE tab_ids (id INTEGER)
ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS;
Populate the temporary table with the IDs you need.
Use EXISTS operation in your procedure to select the rows that are only in the IDs table:
SELECT yt.col1, yt.col2 FROM your\_table yt
WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT 'X' FROM tab_ids ti
WHERE ti.id = yt.id
)
You can also pass a comma-separated string of IDs as a function parameter and parse it into a table. This is performed by a single SELECT. Want to know more - ask me how :-) But it's got to be a separate question.