I am practicing SQL in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (not a homework question), and have a table Names. The table shows baby names by year, with columns Sex (gender of name), N (number of babies having that name), Yr (year), and Name (the name itself).
I need to write a query using only one SELECT statement that returns the most popular baby name by year, with gender, the year, and the number of babies named. So far I have;
SELECT *
From Names
ORDER By N DESC;
Which gives the highest values of N in DESC order, repeating years. I need to limit it to only the highest value in each year, and everything I have tried to do so has thrown errors. Any advice you can give me for this would be appreciated.
Off the top of my my head, something like the following would normally let you do it in (technically) one SELECT statment. That statement includes sub-SELECTs, but I'm not immediately seeing an alternative that wouldn't.
When there's joint top ranking names, both queries should bring back all joint top results so there may not be exactly one answer. If you then just need a random single representative row from those result, look at using select top 1, perhaps adding order by to get the first alphabetically.
Most popular by year regardless of gender:
-- ONE PER YEAR:
SELECT n.Year, n.Name, n.Gender, n.Qty FROM Name n
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT 1 FROM Name n2
WHERE n2.Year = n.Year
AND n2.Qty > n.Qty
)
Most popular by year for each gender:
-- ONE PER GENDER PER YEAR:
SELECT n.Year, n.Name, n.Gender, n.Qty FROM Name n
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT 1 FROM Name n2
WHERE n2.Year = n.Year
AND n2.Gender = n.Gender
AND n2.Qty > n.Qty
)
Performance is, despite the verbosity of the SQL, usually on a par with alternatives when using this pattern (often better).
There are other approaches, including using GROUP statements, but personally I find this one more readable and standard cross-DBMS.
Related
I have the following problem:
I need to identify the last occurrence of any sub-string given in table A, and return that given value in return in the select statement of another statement. This is a bit convoluted, but here is the code:
SELECT TRIM(COUNTRY_CODE)
FROM (
SELECT TOP 1 POSITION( PHRASE IN MY_STRING) AS PHRASE_LOCATION, CODE
FROM REFERENCE_TABLE -- Where the country list is located
WHERE PHRASE_LOCATION > 0 -- To return NULL if there is no matches
ORDER BY 1 DESC -- To get the last one
) t1
This works when run by it self, but i have large problems getting it to work as part of another queries' select. I need "MY_STRING" to come from a higher level in the nested select three. The reasons for this is how the system is designed on a higher level.
In other words i need the following:
PHRASE is coming from a table that have a phrases and a code associated
MY_STRING is used in the higher level select and i need to associate a code with it, based on the last occurring phrase
Number of different phrases > 400 so no hard coding :(
Number of different "MY_STRING" > 1 000 000 / day
So far i tried what you can see above, but due to the constraints of the system, i cannot be to creative.
Example Phrases: "New York", "London", "Oslo"
Example Codes: "US", "UK, "NO"
Example Strings: "London House, Something street, New York"; "Some street x, 0120, OSL0".
Desired Outcomes: "US"; "NO"
This will result in a product join, i.e. use a lot of CPU:
SELECT MY_STRING
-- using INSTR searching the last occurance instead of POSITION if the same PHRASE might occur multiple times
-- INSTR is case sensitive -> must use LOWER
,Instr(Lower(MY_STRING), Lower(PHRASE), -1, 1) AS PHRASE_LOCATION
,CODE
,PHRASE
FROM table_with_MY_STRING
LEFT JOIN REFERENCE_TABLE -- to return NULL if no match
ON PHRASE_LOCATION > 0
QUALIFY
Row_Number() -- return last match
Over (PARTITION BY MY_STRING
ORDER BY PHRASE_LOCATION DESC) = 1
If this is not efficient enough another possible solution might utilize STRTOK_SPLIT_TO_TABLE/REGEXP_SPLIT_TO_TABLE: split the address into parts and then join those parts to PHRASE.
I'm using Access (I normally use SQL Server) for a little job, and I'm getting "enter parameter value" for Night.NightId in the statement below that has a subquery within a subquery. I expect it would work if I wasn't nesting it two levels deep, but I can't think of a way around it (query ideas welcome).
The scenario is pretty simple, there's a Night table with a one-to-many relationship to a Score table - each night normally has 10 scores. Each score has a bit field IsDouble which is normally true for two of the scores.
I want to list all of the nights, with a number next to each representing how many of the top 2 scores were marked IsDouble (would be 0, 1 or 2).
Here's the SQL, I've tried lots of combinations of adding aliases to the column and the tables, but I've taken them out for simplicity below:
select Night.*
,
( select sum(IIF(IsDouble,1,0)) from
(SELECT top 2 * from Score where NightId=Night.NightId order by Score desc, IsDouble asc, ID)
) as TopTwoMarkedAsDoubles
from Night
This is a bit of speculation. However, some databases have issues with correlation conditions in multiply nested subqueries. MS Access might have this problem.
If so, you can solve this by using aggregation with a where clause that chooses the top two values:
select s.nightid,
sum(IIF(IsDouble, 1, 0)) as TopTwoMarkedAsDoubles
from Score as s
where s.id in (select top 2 s2.id
from score as s2
where s2.nightid = s.nightid
order by s2.score desc, s2.IsDouble asc, s2.id
)
group by s.nightid;
If this works, it is a simply matter to join Night back in to get the additional columns.
Your subquery can only see one level above it. so Night.NightId is totally unknown to it hence why you are being prompted to enter a value. You can use a Group By to get the value you want for each NightId then correlate that back to the original Night table.
Select *
From Night
left join (
Select N.NightId
, sum(IIF(S.IsDouble,1,0)) as [Number of Doubles]
from Night N
inner join Score S
on S.NightId = S.NightId
group by N.NightId) NightsWithScores
on Night.NightId = NightsWithScores.NightId
Because of the IIF(S.IsDouble,1,0) I don't see the point is using top.
My mom wanted a baby name game for my brother's baby shower. Wanting to learn python, I volunteered to do it. I pretty much have the python bit, it's the SQL that is throwing me.
The way the game is supposed to work is everyone at the shower writes down names on paper, I manually enter them into Excel (normalizing spellings as much as possible) and export to MS Access. Then I run my python program to find the player with the most popular names and the player with the most unique names. The database, called "babynames", is just four columns.
ID | BabyFirstName | BabyMiddleName | PlayerName
---|---------------|----------------|-----------
My mom has changed things every so often, but as they stand right now, I have to figure out :
a) The most popular name (or names if there is a tie) out of all first and middle names
b) The most unique name (or names if there is a tie) out of all the first and middle names
c) The player that has the most number of popular names (wins a prize)
d) The player that has the most number of unique names (wins a prize)
I've been working on this for about a week now and can't even get a SQL query for a) and b) to work, much less c) and d). I'm more than just a bit frustrated.
BTW, I'm just looking at spellings of the names, not phonetics. As I manually enter names, I will change names like "Kris" to "Chris" and "Xtina" to "Christina" etc.
Editing to add a couple of the most recent queries I tried for a)
SELECT [BabyFirstName],
COUNT ([BabyFirstName]) AS 'FirstNameOccurrence'
FROM [babynames]
GROUP BY [BabyFirstName]
ORDER BY 'FirstNameOccurrence' DESC
LIMIT 1
and
SELECT [BabyFirstName]
FROM [babynames]
GROUP BY [BabyFirstName]
HAVING COUNT(*) =
(SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM [babynames]
GROUP BY [BabyFirstName]
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
LIMIT 1)
These both lead to syntax errors.
pyodbc.ProgrammingError: ('42000', '[42000] [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Syntax error in ORDER BY clause. (-3508) (SQLExecDirectW)')
I've tried using [FirstNameOccurrence] and just FirstNameOccurrence as well with the same error. Not sure why it's not recognizing it by that column name to order by.
pyodbc.ProgrammingError: ('42000', "[42000] [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Syntax error. in query expression 'COUNT(*) = (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [babynames] GROUP BY [BabyFirstName] ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC LIMIT 1)'. (-3100) (SQLExecDirectW)")
I'll admit that I'm not really grokking all of the COUNT(*) commands here, but this was a solution for a similar issue here in stackoverflow that I figured I'd try when my other idea didn't pan out.
For A and B, use a group by clause in your SQL, and then count, and order by the count. Use descending order for A and ascending order for B, and just take the first result for each.
For C and D, essentially use the same strategy but now just add the PlayerName (e.g. group by babyname,playername) and then use the ascending order/descending order question.
Here's Microsoft's write-up for a group by clause in MS Access: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/group-by-clause-HA001231482.aspx
Here's an even better write-up demonstrating how to do both group by and order by at the same time: http://rogersaccessblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/select-queries-part-3-sorting-and.html
For the first query you tried, change it to:
SELECT TOP 1 [BabyFirstName],
COUNT ([BabyFirstName]) AS 'FirstNameOccurrence'
FROM [babynames]
GROUP BY [BabyFirstName]
ORDER BY 'FirstNameOccurrence' DESC
For the second, change it to:
SELECT [BabyFirstName]
FROM [babynames]
GROUP BY [BabyFirstName]
HAVING COUNT(*) =
(SELECT TOP 1 COUNT(*)
FROM [babynames]
GROUP BY [BabyFirstName]
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC)
Limiting the number of records returned by a SQL Statement in Access is achieved by adding a TOP statement directly after SELECT, not with ORDER BY... LIMIT
Also, Access TOP statement will return all instances of the top n (or n percent) unique records, so if there are two or more identical records in the query output (before TOP), and TOP 1 is specified, you'll see them all.
So, I have a problem with a SQL Query.
It's about getting weather data for German cities. I have 4 tables: staedte (the cities with primary key loc_id), gehoert_zu (contains the city-key and the key of the weather station that is closest to this city (stations_id)), wettermessung (contains all the weather information and the station's key value) and wetterstation (contains the stations key and location). And I'm using PostgreSQL
Here is how the tables look like:
wetterstation
s_id[PK] standort lon lat hoehe
----------------------------------------
10224 Bremen 53.05 8.8 4
wettermessung
stations_id[PK] datum[PK] max_temp_2m ......
----------------------------------------------------
10224 2013-3-24 -0.4
staedte
loc_id[PK] name lat lon
-------------------------------
15 Asch 48.4 9.8
gehoert_zu
loc_id[PK] stations_id[PK]
-----------------------------
15 10224
What I'm trying to do is to get the name of the city with the (for example) highest temperature at a specified date (could be a whole month, or a day). Since the weather data is bound to a station, I actually need to get the station's ID and then just choose one of the corresponding to this station cities. A possible question would be: "In which city was it hottest in June ?" and, say, the highest measured temperature was in station number 10224. As a result I want to get the city Asch. What I got so far is this
SELECT name, MAX (max_temp_2m)
FROM wettermessung, staedte, gehoert_zu
WHERE wettermessung.stations_id = gehoert_zu.stations_id
AND gehoert_zu.loc_id = staedte.loc_id
AND wettermessung.datum BETWEEN '2012-8-1' AND '2012-12-1'
GROUP BY name
ORDER BY MAX (max_temp_2m) DESC
LIMIT 1
There are two problems with the results:
1) it's taking waaaay too long. The tables are not that big (cities has about 70k entries), but it needs between 1 and 7 minutes to get things done (depending on the time span)
2) it ALWAYS produces the same city and I'm pretty sure it's not the right one either.
I hope I managed to explain my problem clearly enough and I'd be happy for any kind of help. Thanks in advance ! :D
If you want to get the max temperature per city use this statement:
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT gz.loc_id, MAX(max_temp_2m) as temperature
FROM wettermessung as wm
INNER JOIN gehoert_zu as gz
ON wm.stations_id = gz.stations_id
WHERE wm.datum BETWEEN '2012-8-1' AND '2012-12-1'
GROUP BY gz.loc_id) as subselect
INNER JOIN staedte as std
ON std.loc_id = subselect.loc_id
ORDER BY subselect.temperature DESC
Use this statement to get the city with the highest temperature (only 1 city):
SELECT * FROM(
SELECT name, MAX(max_temp_2m) as temp
FROM wettermessung as wm
INNER JOIN gehoert_zu as gz
ON wm.stations_id = gz.stations_id
INNER JOIN staedte as std
ON gz.loc_id = std.loc_id
WHERE wm.datum BETWEEN '2012-8-1' AND '2012-12-1'
GROUP BY name
ORDER BY MAX(max_temp_2m) DESC
LIMIT 1) as subselect
ORDER BY temp desc
LIMIT 1
For performance reasons always use explicit joins as LEFT, RIGHT, INNER JOIN and avoid to use joins with separated table name, so your sql serevr has not to guess your table references.
This is a general example of how to get the item with the highest, lowest, biggest, smallest, whatever value. You can adjust it to your particular situation.
select fred, barney, wilma
from bedrock join
(select fred, max(dino) maxdino
from bedrock
where whatever
group by fred ) flinstone on bedrock.fred = flinstone.fred
where dino = maxdino
and other conditions
I propose you use a consistent naming convention. Singular terms for tables holding a single item per row is a good convention. You only table breaking this is staedte. Should be stadt.
And I suggest to use station_id consistently instead of either s_id and stations_id.
Building on these premises, for your question:
... get the name of the city with the ... highest temperature at a specified date
SELECT s.name, w.max_temp_2m
FROM (
SELECT station_id, max_temp_2m
FROM wettermessung
WHERE datum >= '2012-8-1'::date
AND datum < '2012-12-1'::date -- exclude upper border
ORDER BY max_temp_2m DESC, station_id -- id as tie breaker
LIMIT 1
) w
JOIN gehoert_zu g USING (station_id) -- assuming normalized names
JOIN stadt s USING (loc_id)
Use explicit JOIN conditions for better readability and maintenance.
Use table aliases to simplify your query.
Use x >= a AND x < b to include the lower border and exclude the upper border, which is the common use case.
Aggregate first and pick your station with the highest temperature, before you join to the other tables to retrieve the city name. Much simpler and faster.
You did not specify what to do when multiple "wettermessungen" tie on max_temp_2m in the given time frame. I added station_id as tiebreaker, meaning the station with the lowest id will be picked consistently if there are multiple qualifying stations.
Suppose I have a database of athletic meeting results with a schema as follows
DATE,NAME,FINISH_POS
I wish to do a query to select all rows where an athlete has competed in at least three events without winning. For example with the following sample data
2013-06-22,Johnson,2
2013-06-21,Johnson,1
2013-06-20,Johnson,4
2013-06-19,Johnson,2
2013-06-18,Johnson,3
2013-06-17,Johnson,4
2013-06-16,Johnson,3
2013-06-15,Johnson,1
The following rows:
2013-06-20,Johnson,4
2013-06-19,Johnson,2
Would be matched. I have only managed to get started at the following stub:
select date,name FROM table WHERE ...;
I've been trying to wrap my head around the where clause but I can't even get a start
I think this can be even simpler / faster:
SELECT day, place, athlete
FROM (
SELECT *, min(place) OVER (PARTITION BY athlete
ORDER BY day
ROWS 3 PRECEDING) AS best
FROM t
) sub
WHERE best > 1
->SQLfiddle
Uses the aggregate function min() as window function to get the minimum place of the last three rows plus the current one.
The then trivial check for "no win" (best > 1) has to be done on the next query level since window functions are applied after the WHERE clause. So you need at least one CTE of sub-select for a condition on the result of a window function.
Details about window function calls in the manual here. In particular:
If frame_end is omitted it defaults to CURRENT ROW.
If place (finishing_pos) can be NULL, use this instead:
WHERE best IS DISTINCT FROM 1
min() ignores NULL values, but if all rows in the frame are NULL, the result is NULL.
Don't use type names and reserved words as identifiers, I substituted day for your date.
This assumes at most 1 competition per day, else you have to define how to deal with peers in the time line or use timestamp instead of date.
#Craig already mentioned the index to make this fast.
Here's an alternative formulation that does the work in two scans without subqueries:
SELECT
"date", athlete, place
FROM (
SELECT
"date",
place,
athlete,
1 <> ALL (array_agg(place) OVER w) AS include_row
FROM Table1
WINDOW w AS (PARTITION BY athlete ORDER BY "date" ASC ROWS BETWEEN 3 PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW)
) AS history
WHERE include_row;
See: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!1/fa3a4/34
The logic here is pretty much a literal translation of the question. Get the last four placements - current and the previous 3 - and return any rows in which the athlete didn't finish first in any of them.
Because the window frame is the only place where the number of rows of history to consider is defined, you can parameterise this variant unlike my previous effort (obsolete, http://sqlfiddle.com/#!1/fa3a4/31), so it works for the last n for any n. It's also a lot more efficient than the last try.
I'd be really interested in the relative efficiency of this vs #Andomar's query when executed on a dataset of non-trivial size. They're pretty much exactly the same on this tiny dataset. An index on Table1(athlete, "date") would be required for this to perform optimally on a large data set.
; with CTE as
(
select row_number() over (partition by athlete order by date) rn
, *
from Table1
)
select *
from CTE cur
where not exists
(
select *
from CTE prev
where prev.place = 1
and prev.athlete = cur.athlete
and prev.rn between cur.rn - 3 and cur.rn
)
Live example at SQL Fiddle.