SQL: Can GROUP BY contain an expression as a field? - sql

Question

I want to group a set of dated records by year, when the date is to the day. Something like:
SELECT venue, YEAR(date) AS yr, SUM(guests) AS yr_guests
FROM Events
...
GROUP BY venue, YEAR(date);
The above is giving me results instead of an error, but the results are not grouping by year and venue; they do not appear to be grouping at all.
My brute force solution would be a nested subquery: add the YEAR() AS yr as an extra column in the subquery, then do the grouping on yr in the outer query. I'm just trying to learn to do as much as possible without nesting, because nesting usually seems horribly inefficient.
I would tell you the exact SQL implementation I'm using, but I've had trouble discovering it. (I'm working through the problems on http://www.sql-ex.ru/ and if you can tell what they're using, I'd love to know.) Edited to add: Per test in comments, it is probably not SQL Server.
Edited to add the results I am getting (note the first two should be summed):
venue | yr | yr_guests
1 2012 15
1 2012 35
2 2012 12
1 2008 15
I expect those first two lines to instead be summed as
1 2012 50

Answer 1

Works Fine in SQL Server 2008.
See working Example here: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!3/3b0f9/6
Code pasted Below.
Create The Events Table
CREATE TABLE [Events]
( Venue INT NOT NULL,
[Date] DATETIME NOT NULL,
Guests INT NOT NULL
)
Insert the Rows.
INSERT INTO [Events] VALUES
(1,convert(datetime,'2012'),15),
(1,convert(datetime,'2012'),35),
(2,convert(datetime,'2012'),12),
(1,convert(datetime,'2008'),15);
GO
-- Testing, select newly inserted rows.
--SELECT * FROM [Events]
--GO
Run the GROUP BY Sql.
SELECT Venue, YEAR(date) AS yr, SUM(guests) AS yr_guests
FROM Events
GROUP BY venue, YEAR(date);
See the Output Results.
VENUE YR YR_GUESTS
1 2008 15
1 2012 50
2 2012 12

Answer 2

it depends of your database engine (or SQL)
to be sure (over different DB Systems & Versions), make a subquery
SELECT venue, theyear, SUM(guests) from (
SELECT venue, YEAR(date) AS theyear, guest
FROM Events
)
GROUP BY theyear
you make a subtable of
venue, date as theyear, guest
aaaa, 2001, brother
aaaa, 2001, bbrother
bbbb, 2001, nobody
... and so on
and then
count them