SQL - Selecting Records with an odd number of a given attribute - sql

I'm just brushing up on some SQL - in other words, I'm really rusty - and am a bit stuck at the moment. It's probably something trivial, but we'll see.
I'd like to select all people that possess an odd number of a certain attribute that isn't an integer ( in this example, TransactionType). So, for example, take the following test/not real info where these people are buying a car or some similarly big purchase.
Name TransactionType Date
John Buy 5/1
John Cancel 5/1
John Buy 5/2
Joseph Buy 5/25
Joseph Cancel 5/25
Tanya Buy 5/28
I would like it to return the people who had an odd number of transactions; in other words, they ended up purchasing the item. So, in this case, John and Tanya would be selected and Joseph would not.
I know I can use the modulus operand here, but I'm a bit lost how to utilize it correctly.
I thought of using
count(TransactionType) % 2 != 0
in the where clause but that's obviously a no-go. Any pointers in the right direction would be very helpful. Let me know if this is unclear, and thanks!

You are close. You need a having clause instead of a where clause.
select Name
from table
group by Name
having count(TransactionType) % 2 != 0

Wouldn't you be better off getting the latest status by the transaction date and using that rather than relying on counting TransactionType to determine the latest status:
Something like this:
SELECT b.Name, b.TransactionType, b.[Date]
FROM (
SELECT Name, MAX(t1.[DATE]) latestDate
FROM [Transactions] t1
GROUP BY t1.Name
) a
INNER JOIN [Transactions] b ON b.Name = a.Name AND a.latestDate = b.[Date]
WHERE b.TransactionType = 'Buy'
Assuming your dates are valid dates with times included, this should work.
Sample SQL Fiddle
If you only store the date portion the max date would be the same for people that Buy and Cancel on the same date, therefore it would return more data and some incorrect records.

Related

SQL - Find the horses that have run at ONLY 1 specific track

I have some horse data in a table and am practicing SQL while following my hobby. I would like to find an elegant way to solve this problem. Right now I have this convoluted way of getting the answer but I know there HAS to be an easier way.
Description:
I'll make it really simple (Assume these 8 rows are the entire table). I have a table with 4 columns. HORSE_ID, NAME, TRACK, Date
A horse might run at one track or many different tracks. The end goal is to find what only the horses who have ran/campaigned at only one specific track....in this case, I want to see the horses that have run all their races at SA (Santa Anita)
HORSE_ID NAME TRACK DATE
1 JUSTIFY SA FEB-2018
2 JUSTIFY PIM MAY-2018
3 JUSTIFY BEL JUN-2018
4 KANTHAKA SA DEC-2017
5 KANTHAKA SA JAN-2018
7 THREE RULES GP JUL-2016
8 DABSTER SA JAN-2018
So if I ran this query with this data, the only horses I would expect to see are KANTHAKA, and DABSTER because they are the only horses that only ran all their races at Santa Anita track. So say next month KANTHAKA ran at ANOTHER DIFFERENT track, then the next time the query was run, only DABSTER would show up.
Does this make sense?
Try using GROUP BY with HAVING:
SELECT NAME
FROM yourTable
GROUP BY NAME
HAVING MIN(TRACK) = MAX(TRACK);
Writing the HAVING clause as above is preferable to writing HAVING COUNT(DISTINCT TRACK) = 1. The reason for this is that the above query can make use of an index on (NAME, TRACK).
If in addition you wish to restrict to a single track, then we can try:
SELECT NAME
FROM yourTable
GROUP BY NAME
HAVING MIN(TRACK) = MAX(TRACK) AND MIN(TRACK) = 'SA';
You can do a subquery requesting the count of distinct tracks to be 1 using GROUP BY and HAVING COUNT DISTINCT and then select those WHERE the track is 'SA':
SELECT NAME
FROM
(SELECT NAME, MIN(TRACK) as TRACK
FROM HORSES
GROUP BY 1
HAVING COUNT (DISTINCT TRACK) = 1) horses_one_race
WHERE
TRACK = 'SA'

SQL with Bob and John owing each other money

I have got the following 3 fields in a file: person_ows person_is_owed amount
Example content:
Bob John 100
John Bob 110
What does a SQL look like that produces:
Bob John 100 110
John Bob 110 100
Sorry if this is a trivial question, but I am just trying to learn SQL and I find it really like HELL!
So, what you need is to be able to JOIN two rows. In this case you'll probably want an OUTER JOIN assuming that there isn't always a match of each owing the other. Now you just need to come up with your JOIN criteria, which in this case is going to be based on the names (person_owes and person_is_owed):
SELECT
T1.person_owes,
T1.person_is_owed,
T1.amount AS owes_amount,
COALESCE(T2.amount, 0) AS is_owed_amount
FROM
My_Table T1
LEFT OUTER JOIN My_Table T2 ON T2.person_is_owed = T1.person_owes
The COALESCE is just to make sure that when there is no match that you get a value of 0 instead of NULL.
Also, this assumes that there is only going to be one of each combination of person_owes and person_is_owed. If you might have two rows showing that John owes Bill two different amounts of money then you would have to adjust the SQL above and it would be a bit more complex.
If you plan to use SQL much then you should invest the time in reading one (or preferably more) beginning books on the subject.
Assuming that the combination of (person_ows, person_is_owed) is unique
select person_ows,
person_is_owed,
amount,
(select t2.amount
from the_table t2
where (t2.person_ows, t2.person_is_owed) = (t1.person_is_owed, t1.person_ows))
from the_table t1

SSRS query and WHERE with multiple

Being new with SQL and SSRS and can do many things already, but I think I must be missing some basics and therefore bang my head on the wall all the time.
A report that is almost working, needs to have more results in it, based on conditions.
My working query so far is like this:
SELECT projects.project_number, project_phases.project_phase_id, project_phases.project_phase_number, project_phases.project_phase_header, project_phase_expensegroups.projectphase_expense_total, invoicerows.invoicerow_total
FROM projects INNER JOIN
project_phases ON projects.project_id = project_phases.project_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN
project_phase_expensegroups ON project_phases.project_phase_id = project_phase_expensegroups.project_phase_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN
invoicerows ON project_phases.project_phase_id = invoicerows.project_phase_id
WHERE ( projects.project_number = #iProjectNumber )
AND
( project_phase_expensegroups.projectphase_expense_total >0 )
The parameter is for selectionlist that is used to choose a project to the report.
How to have also records that have
( project_phase_expensegroups.projectphase_expense_total ) with value 0 but there might be invoices for that project phase?
Tried already to add another condition like this:
WHERE ( projects.project_number = #iProjectNumber )
AND
( project_phase_expensegroups.projectphase_expense_total > 0 )
OR
( invoicerows.invoicerow_total > 0 )
but while it gives some results - also the one with projectphase_expense_total with value 0, but the report is total mess.
So my question is: what am I doing wrong here?
There is a core problem with your query in that you are left joining to two tables, implying that rows may not exist, but then putting conditions on those tables, which will eliminate NULLs. That means your query is internally inconsistent as is.
The next problem is that you're joining two tables to project_phases that both may have multiple rows. Since these data are not related to each other (as proven by the fact that you have no join condition between project_phase_expensegroups and invoicerows, your query is not going to work correctly. For example, given a list of people, a list of those people's favorite foods, and a list of their favorite colors like so:
People
Person
------
Joe
Mary
FavoriteFoods
Person Food
------ ---------
Joe Broccoli
Joe Bananas
Mary Chocolate
Mary Cake
FavoriteColors
Person Color
------ ----------
Joe Red
Joe Blue
Mary Periwinkle
Mary Fuchsia
When you join these with links between Person <-> Food and Person <-> Color, you'll get a result like this:
Person Food Color
------ --------- ----------
Joe Broccoli Red
Joe Bananas Red
Joe Broccoli Blue
Joe Bananas Blue
Mary Chocolate Periwinkle
Mary Chocolate Fuchsia
Mary Cake Periwinkle
Mary Cake Fuchsia
This is essentially a cross-join, also known as a Cartesian product, between the Foods and the Colors, because they have a many-to-one relationship with each person, but no relationship with each other.
There are a few ways to deal with this in the report.
Create ExpenseGroup and InvoiceRow subreports, that are called from the main report by a combination of project_id and project_phase_id parameters.
Summarize one or the other set of data into a single value. For example, you could sum the invoice rows. Or, you could concatenate the expense groups into a single string separated by commas.
Some notes:
Please, please format your query before posting it in a question. It is almost impossible to read when not formatted. It seems pretty clear that you're using a GUI to create the query, but do us the favor of not having to format it ourselves just to help you
While formatting, please use aliases, Don't use full table names. It just makes the query that much harder to understand.
You need an extra parentheses in your where clause in order to get the logic right.
WHERE ( projects.project_number = #iProjectNumber )
AND (
(project_phase_expensegroups.projectphase_expense_total > 0)
OR
(invoicerows.invoicerow_total > 0)
)
Also, you're using a column in your WHERE clause from a table that is left joined without checking for NULLs. That basically makes it a (slow) inner join. If you want to include rows that don't match from that table you also need to check for NULL. Any other comparison besides IS NULL will always be false for NULL values. See this page for more information about SQL's three value predicate logic: http://www.firstsql.com/idefend3.htm
To keep your LEFT JOINs working as you intended you would need to do this:
WHERE ( projects.project_number = #iProjectNumber )
AND (
project_phase_expensegroups.projectphase_expense_total > 0
OR project_phase_expensegroups.project_phase_id IS NULL
OR invoicerows.invoicerow_total > 0
OR invoicerows.project_phase_id IS NULL
)
I found the solution and it was kind easy after all. I changed the only the second LEFT OUTER JOIN to INNER JOIN and left away condition where the query got only results over zero. Also I used SELECT DISTINCT
Now my report is working perfectly.

Use Access SQL to do a grouped ranking

How do I rank salespeople by # customers grouped by department (with ties included)?
For example, given this table, I want to create the Rank column on the right. How should I do this in Access?
SalesPerson Dept #Customers Rank
Bill DeptA 20 1
Ted DeptA 30 2
Jane DeptA 40 3
Bill DeptB 50 1
Mary DeptB 60 2
I already know how to do a simple ranking with this SQL code. But I don't know how to rework this to accept grouping.
Select Count(*) from [Tbl] Where [#Customers] < [Tblx]![#Customers] )+1
Also, there's plenty of answers for this using SQL Server's Rank() function, but I need to do this in Access. Suggestions, please?
SELECT *, (select count(*) from tbl as tbl2 where
tbl.customers > tbl2.customers and tbl.dept = tbl2.dept) + 1 as rank from tbl
Just add the dept field to the subquery...
Great solution with subquery! Except for huge recordsets, the subquery solution gets very slow. Its better(quicker) to use a Self JOIN, look at the folowing solution: self join
SELECT tbl1.SalesPerson , count(*) AS Rank
FROM tbl AS tbl1 INNER JOIN tbl AS tbl2 ON tbl1.DEPT = tbl2.DEPT
AND tbl1.#Customers < tbl2.#Customers
GROUP BY tbl1.SalesPerson
I know this is an old thread. But since I spent a great deal of time on a very similar problem and was greatly helped by the former answers given here, I would like to share what I have found to be a MUCH faster way. (Beware, it is more complicated.)
First make another table called "Individualizer". This will have one field containing a list of numbers 1 through the-highest-rank-that-you-need.
Next create a VBA module and paste this into it:
'Global Declarations Section.
Option Explicit
Global Cntr
'*************************************************************
' Function: Qcntr()
'
' Purpose: This function will increment and return a dynamic
' counter. This function should be called from a query.
'*************************************************************
Function QCntr(x) As Long
Cntr = Cntr + 1
QCntr = Cntr
End Function
'**************************************************************
' Function: SetToZero()
'
' Purpose: This function will reset the global Cntr to 0. This
' function should be called each time before running a query
' containing the Qcntr() function.
'**************************************************************
Function SetToZero()
Cntr = 0
End Function
Save it as Module1.
Next, create Query1 like this:
SELECT Table1.Dept, Count(Table1.Salesperson) AS CountOfSalesperson
FROM Table1
GROUP BY Table1.Dept;
Create a MakeTable query called Query2 like this:
SELECT SetToZero() AS Expr1, QCntr([ID]) AS Rank, Query1.Dept,
Query1.CountOfSalesperson, Individualizer.ID
INTO Qtable1
FROM Query1
INNER JOIN Individualizer
ON Query1.CountOfSalesperson >= Individualizer.ID;
Create another MakeTable query called Query3 like this:
SELECT SetToZero() AS Expr1, QCntr([Identifier]) AS Rank,
[Salesperson] & [Dept] & [#Customers] AS Identifier, Table1.Salesperson,
Table1.Dept, Table1.[#Customers]
INTO Qtable2
FROM Table1;
If you have another field already that uniquely identifies every row you wouldn't need to create an Identifier field.
Run Query2 and Query3 to create the tables.
Create a fourth query called Query4 like this:
SELECT Qtable2.Salesperson, Qtable2.Dept, Qtable2.[#Customers], Qtable1.ID AS Rank
FROM Qtable1
INNER JOIN Qtable2 ON Qtable1.Rank = Qtable2.Rank;
Query4 returns the result you are looking for.
Practically, you would want to write a VBA function to run Query2 and Query3 and then call that function from a button placed in a convenient location.
Now I know this sounds ridiculously complicated for the example you gave. But in real life, I am sure your table is more complicated than this. Hopefully my examples can be applied to your actual situation. In my database with over 12,000 records this method is by FAR the fastest (as in: 6 seconds with 12,000 records compared to over 1 minute with 262 records ranked with the subquery method).
The real secret for me was the MakeTable query because this ranking method is useless unless you immediately output the results to a table. But, this does limit the situations that it can be applied to.
P.S. I forgot to mention that in my database I was not pulling results directly from a table. The records had already gone through a string of queries and multiple calculations before they needed to be ranked. This probably contributed greatly to the huge difference in speed between the two methods in my situation. If you are pulling records directly from a table, you might not notice nearly as big an improvement.
You need to do some math. I typically take advantage of the combination of a counter field and an "offset" field. You're aiming for a table which looks like this (#Customers isn't necessary, but will give you a visual that you're doing it properly):
SalesPerson Dept #Customers Ctr Offset
Bill DeptA 20 1 1
Ted DeptA 30 2 1
Jane DeptA 40 3 1
Bill DeptB 50 4 4
Mary DeptB 60 5 4
So, to give rank, you'd do [Ctr]-[Offset]+1 AS Rank
build a table with SalesPerson, Dept, Ctr, and Offset
insert into that table, ordered by Dept and #Customers (so that they're all sorted properly)
Update Offset to be the MIN(Ctr), grouping on Dept
Perform your math calculation to determine Rank
Clear out the table so you're ready to use it again next time.
To add to this and any other related Access Ranking or Rank Tie Breaker how-tos for other versions of Access, ranking should not be performed on crosstab queries if your FROM clause happens to NOT contain a table but a query that is either a crosstab query or a query that contains within it elsewhere a crosstab query.
The code referenced above where a SELECT statement within a SELECT statment is used (sub query),
"SELECT *, (select count(*) from tbl as tbl2 where tbl.customers > tbl2.customers and tbl.dept = tbl2.dept) + 1 as rank from tbl"
will not work and will always fail expressing a error on portion of the code where "tbl.customers > tbl2.customers" cannot be found.
In my situation on a past project, I was referencing a query instead of a table and within that query I had referenced a crosstab query thus failing and producing an error. I was able to resolve this by creating a table from the crosstab query first, and when I referenced the newly created table in the FROM clause, it started working for me.
So in final, normally you can reference a query or table in the FROM clause of the SELECT statement as what was shared previously above to do ranking, but be carefull as to if you are referencing a query instead of a table, that query must Not be a crosstab query or reference another query that is a crosstab query.
Hope this helps anyone else that may have had problems looking for a possible reason if you happen to reference the statements above and you are not referencing a table in your FROM clause within your own project. Also, performing subqueries on aliases with crosstab queries in Access probably isn't good idea or best practice either so stray away from that if/when possible.
If you found this useful, and wish that Access would allow the use of a scrolling mouse in a passthru query editor, give me a like please.
I normally pick tips and ideas from here and sometimes end up building amazing things from it!
Today, (well let’s say for the past one week), I have been tinkering with Ranking of data in Access and to the best of my ability, I did not anticipate what I was going to do something so complex as to take me a week to figure it out! I picked titbits from two main sites:
https://usefulgyaan.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/ranking-in-ms-access/ (seen that clever ‘>=’ part, and the self joins? Amazing… it helped me to build my solution from just one query, as opposed to the complex method suggested above by asonoftheMighty (not discrediting you… just didn’t want to try it for now; may be when I get to large data I might want to try that as well…)
Right here, from Paul Abott above ( ‘and tbl.dept = tbl2.dept’)… I was lost after ranking because I was placing AND YearID = 1, etc, then the ranking would end up happening only for sub-sets, you guessed right, when YearID = 1! But I had a lot of different scenarios…
Well, I gave that story partly to thank the contributors mentioned, because what I did is to me one of the most complex of the ranking that I think can help you in almost any situation, and since I benefited from others, I would like to share here what I hope may benefit others as well.
Forgive me that I am not able to post my table structures here, it is a lot of related tables. I will only post the query, so if you need to you may develop your tables to end up with that kind of query. But here is my scenario:
You have students in a school. They go through class 1 to 4, can either be in stream A or B, or none when the class is too small. They each take 4 exams (this part is not important now), so you get the total score for my case. That’s it. Huh??
Ok. Lets rank them this way:
We want to know the ranking of
• all students who ever passed through this school (best ever student)
• all students in a particular academic year (student of the year)
• students of a particular class (but remember a student will have passed through all classes, so basically his/her rank in each of those classes for the different years) this is the usual ranking that appears in report cards
• students in their streams (above comment applies)
• I would also like to know the population against which we ranked this student in each category
… all in one table/query. Now you get the point?
(I normally like to do as much of my 'programming' in the database/queries to give me visuals and to reduce the amount of code I will later have to right. I actually won't use this query in my application :), but it let's me know where and how to send my parameters to the query it came from, and what results to expect in my rdlc)
Don't you worry, here it is:
SELECT Sc.StudentID, Sc.StudentName, Sc.Mark,
(SELECT COUNT(Sch.Mark) FROM [StudentScoreRankTermQ] AS Sch WHERE (Sch.Mark >= Sc.Mark)) AS SchoolRank,
(SELECT Count(s.StudentID) FROM StudentScoreRankTermQ AS s) As SchoolTotal,
(SELECT COUNT(Yr.Mark) FROM [StudentScoreRankTermQ] AS Yr WHERE (Yr.Mark >= Sc.Mark) AND (Yr.YearID = Sc.YearID) ) AS YearRank,
(SELECT COUNT(StudentID) FROM StudentScoreRankTermQ AS Yt WHERE (Yt.YearID = Sc.YearID) ) AS YearTotal,
(SELECT COUNT(Cl.Mark) FROM [StudentScoreRankTermQ] AS Cl WHERE (Cl.Mark >= Sc.Mark) AND (Cl.YearID = Sc.YearID) AND (Cl.TermID = Sc.TermID) AND (Cl.ClassID=Sc.ClassID)) AS ClassRank,
(SELECT COUNT(StudentID) FROM StudentScoreRankTermQ AS C WHERE (C.YearID = Sc.YearID) AND (C.TermID = Sc.TermID) AND (C.ClassID = Sc.ClassID) ) AS ClassTotal,
(SELECT COUNT(Str.Mark) FROM [StudentScoreRankTermQ] AS Str WHERE (Str.Mark >= Sc.Mark) AND (Str.YearID = Sc.YearID) AND (Str.TermID = Sc.TermID) AND (Str.ClassID=Sc.ClassID) AND (Str.StreamID = Sc.StreamID) ) AS StreamRank,
(SELECT COUNT(StudentID) FROM StudentScoreRankTermQ AS St WHERE (St.YearID = Sc.YearID) AND (St.TermID = Sc.TermID) AND (St.ClassID = Sc.ClassID) AND (St.StreamID = Sc.StreamID) ) AS StreamTotal,
Sc.CalendarYear, Sc.Term, Sc.ClassNo, Sc.Stream, Sc.StreamID, Sc.YearID, Sc.TermID, Sc.ClassID
FROM StudentScoreRankTermQ AS Sc
ORDER BY Sc.Mark DESC;
You should get something like this:
+-----------+-------------+------+------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-------------+------+------+-------+--------+
| StudentID | StudentName | Mark | SchoolRank | SchoolTotal | YearRank | YearTotal | ClassRank | ClassTotal | StreamRank | StreamTotal | Year | Term | Class | Stream |
+-----------+-------------+------+------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-------------+------+------+-------+--------+
| 1 | Jane | 200 | 1 | 20 | 2 | 12 | 1 | 9 | 1 | 5 | 2017 | I | 2 | A |
| 2 | Tom | 199 | 2 | 20 | 1 | 12 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 4 | 2016 | I | 1 | B |
+-----------+-------------+------+------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-------------+------+------+-------+--------+
Use the separators | to reconstruct the result table
Just an idea about the tables, each student will be related to a class. Each class relates to years. Each stream relates to a class. Each term relates to a year. Each exam relates to a term and student and a class and a year; a student can be in class 1A in 2016 and moves on to class 2b in 2017, etc…
Let me also add that this a beta result, I have not tested it well enough and I do not yet have an opportunity to create a lot of data to see the performance. My first glance at it told me that it is good. So if you find reasons or alerts you want to point my way, please do so in comments so I may keep learning!

Complex SQL query with group by and two rows in one

Okay, I need help. I'm usually pretty good at SQL queries but this one baffles me. By the way, this is not a homework assignment, it's a real situation in an Access database and I've written the requirements below myself.
Here is my table layout. It's in Access 2007 if that matters; I'm writing the query using SQL.
Id (primary key)
PersonID (foreign key)
EventDate
NumberOfCredits
SuperCredits (boolean)
There are events that people go to. They can earn normal credits, or super credits, or both at one event. The SuperCredits column is true if the row represents a number of super credits earned at the event, or false if it represents normal credits.
So for example, if there is an event which person 174 attends, and they earn 3 normal credits and 1 super credit at the event, the following two rows would be added to the table:
ID PersonID EventDate NumberOfCredits SuperCredits
1 174 1/1/2010 3 false
2 174 1/1/2010 1 true
It is also possible that the person could have done two separate things at the event, so there might be more than two columns for one event, and it might look like this:
ID PersonID EventDate NumberOfCredits SuperCredits
1 174 1/1/2010 1 false
2 174 1/1/2010 2 false
3 174 1/1/2010 1 true
Now we want to print out a report. Here will be the columns of the report:
PersonID
LastEventDate
NumberOfNormalCredits
NumberOfSuperCredits
The report will have one row per person. The row will show the latest event that the person attended, and the normal and super credits that the person earned at that event.
What I am asking of you is to write, or help me write, the SQL query to SELECT the data and GROUP BY and SUM() and whatnot. Or, let me know if this is for some reason not possible, and how to organize my data to make it possible.
This is extremely confusing and I understand if you do not take the time to puzzle through it. I've tried to simplify it as much as possible, but definitely ask any questions if you give it a shot and need clarification. I'll be trying to figure it out but I'm having a real hard time with it, this is grouping beyond my experience...
Create a query/view of the following (say its called PersonLastEvents):
select PersonId, max(EventDate) as LastEventDate
from Events
group by PersonId
Then you can get the data you need with the following. I'm not fully familiar with Access, so you may need to modify some of the syntax, but hopefully this will give you an approach.
select l.PersonId, l.LastEventDate,
sum(case when e.SuperCredits = 'false' then e.NumberOfCredits end)
as NumberOfNormalCredits
sum(case when e.SuperCredits = 'true' then e.NumberOfCredits end)
as NumberOfSuperCredits
from PersonLastEvents l
join Events e on l.PersonId = e.PersonId and l.LastEventDate = l.EventDate
group by l.PersonId, l.LastEventDate
As an aside, it may be easier to change your table to have two number columns (NormalCredits, SuperCredits) as it allows you to simply sum() the columns as required.