Select distinct values for a particular column choosing arbitrarily from duplicates - sql

I have health data relating to deaths. Individual should die once maximum. In the database they sometimes don't; probably because causes of death were changed but the original entry was not deleted. I don't really understand how this was allowed to happen, but it has. So, as a made up example, I have:
Row_number | Individual_ID | Cause_of_death | Date_of_death
------------+---------------+-----------------------+---------------
1 | 1 | Stroke | 3 march 2008
2 | 2 | Myocardial infarction | 1 jan 2009
3 | 2 | Pulmonary Embolus | 1 jan 2009
I want each individual to have only one cause of death.
In the example, I want a query that returns row 1 and either row 2 or row 3 (not both). I have to make an arbitrary choice between rows 2 and 3 because there is no timestamp in any of the fields that can be used to determine which is the revision; it's not ideal but is unavoidable.
I can't make the SQL work to do this. I've tried inner joining distinct Individual_ID to the other fields, but this still gives all the rows. I've tried adding a 'having count(Individual_ID) = 1' clause with it. This leaves out people with more than one cause of death completely. Suggestions on the internet seem to be based on using a timestamped field to choose the most recent, but I don't have that.
IBM DB2. Windows XP. Any thoughts gratefully received.

Have you tried using MIN (or MAX) against the cause of death. (and the date of death, if they died on two different dates)
SELECT IndividualID, MIN(Cause_Of_Death), MIN (Date_Of_Death)
from deaths
GROUP BY IndividualID

I don't know DB2 so I'll answer in general. There are two main approaches:
select *
from T
join (
select keys, min(ID) as MinID
from T
group by keys
) on T.ID = MinID
And
select *, row_number() over (partition by keys) as r
from T
where r = 1
Both return all rows, no matter if duplicate or not. But they returns only one duplicate per "key".
Notice, that both statements are pseudo-SQL.

The row_number() approach is probably preferable from a performance standpoint. Here is usr's example, in DB2 syntax:
select * from (
select T.*, row_number() over (partition by Individual_ID) as r
from T
)
where r=1;

Related

SQL Get n last unique entries by date

I have an access database that I'm well aware is quite poorly designed, unfortunately it is what I must use. It looks a little like the following:
(Row# is not a column in the database, it's just there to help me describe what I'm after)
Row# ID Date Misc
1 001 01/8/2013 A
2 001 01/8/2013 B
3 001 01/8/2013 C
4 002 02/8/2013 D
5 002 02/8/2013 A
6 003 04/8/2013 B
7 003 04/8/2013 D
8 003 04/8/2013 D
What I'm trying to do is obtain all information entered for the last n (by date) 'entries' where an 'entry' is all rows with a unique ID.
So if I want the last 1 entry I will get rows 6, 7 and 8. The last two entries will get me rows 4-8 etc.
I've tried to get the SN's needed in a subselect and then select all entries where those SN's appear, but I couldn't get it to work. Any help appreciated.
Thanks.
The proper Access syntax:
select *
from t
where ID in (select top 10 ID
from t
group by ID
order by max([date]) desc
)
I think this will work:
select *
from table
where Date in (
select distinct(Date) as unique_date from table order by unique_date DESC limit <num>
)
The idea is to use the subselect with a limit to only identify dates you care about.
EDIT: Some databases do not allow a limit in a subquery (I'm looking at you, mysql). In that case, you'll have to make a temporary table out of the subquery then select * from it.

SQL Query to remove cyclic redundancy

I have a table that looks like this:
Column A | Column B | Counter
---------------------------------------------
A | B | 53
B | C | 23
A | D | 11
C | B | 22
I need to remove the last row because it's cyclic to the second row. Can't seem to figure out how to do it.
EDIT
There is an indexed date field. This is for Sankey diagram. The data in the sample table is actually the result of a query. The underlying table has:
date | source node | target node | path count
The query to build the table is:
SELECT source_node, target_node, COUNT(1)
FROM sankey_table
WHERE TO_CHAR(data_date, 'yyyy-mm-dd')='2013-08-19'
GROUP BY source_node, target_node
In the sample, the last row C to B is going backwards and I need to ignore it or the Sankey won't display. I need to only show forward path.
Removing all edges from your graph where the tuple (source_node, target_node) is not ordered alphabetically and the symmetric row exists should give you what you want:
DELETE
FROM sankey_table t1
WHERE source_node > target_node
AND EXISTS (
SELECT NULL from sankey_table t2
WHERE t2.source_node = t1.target_node
AND t2.target_node = t1.source_node)
If you don't want to DELETE them, just use this WHERE clause in your query for generating the input for the diagram.
If you can adjust how your table is populated, you can change the query you're using to only retrieve the values for the first direction (for that date) in the first place, with a little bit an analytic manipulation:
SELECT source_node, target_node, counter FROM (
SELECT source_node,
target_node,
COUNT(*) OVER (PARTITION BY source_node, target_node) AS counter,
RANK () OVER (PARTITION BY GREATEST(source_node, target_node),
LEAST(source_node, target_node), TRUNC(data_date)
ORDER BY data_date) AS rnk
FROM sankey_table
WHERE TO_CHAR(data_date, 'yyyy-mm-dd')='2013-08-19'
)
WHERE rnk = 1;
The inner query gets the same data you collect now but adds a ranking column, which will be 1 for the first row for any source/target pair in any order for a given day. The outer query then just ignores everything else.
This might be a candidate for a materialised view if you're truncating and repopulating it daily.
If you can't change your intermediate table but can still see the underlying table you could join back to it using the same kind of idea; assuming the table you're querying from is called sankey_agg_table:
SELECT sat.source_node, sat.target_node, sat.counter
FROM sankey_agg_table sat
JOIN (SELECT source_node, target_node,
RANK () OVER (PARTITION BY GREATEST(source_node, target_node),
LEAST(source_node, target_node), TRUNC(data_date)
ORDER BY data_date) AS rnk
FROM sankey_table) st
ON st.source_node = sat.source_node
AND st.target_node = sat.target_node
AND st.rnk = 1;
SQL Fiddle demos.
DELETE FROM yourTable
where [Column A]='C'
given that these are all your rows
EDIT
I would recommend that you clean up your source data if you can, i.e. delete the rows that you call backwards, if those rows are incorrect as you state in your comments.

Finding the maximum value of year difference

I have two tables here
BIODATA
ID NAME
1 A
2 B
YEAR
ID JOIN YEAR GRADUATE YEAR
1 1990 1991
2 1990 1993
I already use
select
NAME,
max(year(JOIN_YEAR) - year(GRADUATE_YEAR)) as MAX
from
DATA_DIRI
right join DATA_KARTU
ON BIODATA.ID = YEAR.ID;
but the result became:
+--------+------+
| NAME | MAX |
+--------+------+
| A | 3 |
+--------+------+
I already try a lot of different kind of joins but I still can't find how the NAME to be "B". Anyone can help me? Thanks a lot before
If you use an aggregate and a non-aggregate in the selection set at once, then the row used for the non-aggregate field is essentially picked at random.
Basically, how max works is this - it gathers all rows for each group by query (if there is no group by, all of them), calculates the max and puts that in the result.
But since you also put in a non-aggregate field, it needs a value for that - so what SQL does is just pick a random row. You might think 'well, why doesn't it pick the same row max did?' but what if you used avg or count? These have no row associated with it, so the best it can do is pick randomly. This is why this behaviour exists in general.
What you need to do is use a subquery. Something like select d1.id from data_diri d1 where d1.graduate_year - d1.join_year = (select max(d2.graduate_year - d2.join_year from data_diri d2))

SQL Server 2005 - SUM'ing one field, but only for the first occurence of a second field

Platform: SQL Server 2005 Express
Disclaimer: I’m quite a novice to SQL and so if you are happy to help with what may be a very simple question, then I won’t be offended if you talk slowly and use small words :-)
I have a table where I want to SUM the contents of multiple rows. However, I want to SUM one column only for the first occurrence of text in a different column.
Table schema for table 'tblMain'
fldOne {varchar(100)} Example contents: “Dandelion“
fldTwo {varchar(8)} Example contents: “01:00:00” (represents hh:mm:ss)
fldThree {numeric(10,0)} Example contents: “65”
Contents of table:
Row number fldOne fldTwo fldThree
------------------------------------------------
1 Dandelion 01:00:00 99
2 Daisy 02:15:00 88
3 Dandelion 00:45:00 77
4 Dandelion 00:30:00 10
5 Dandelion 00:15:00 200
6 Rose 01:30:00 55
7 Daisy 01:00:00 22
etc. ad nausium
If I use:
Select * from tblMain where fldTwo < ’05:00:00’ order by fldOne, fldTwo desc
Then all rows are correctly returned, ordered by fldOne and then fldTwo in descending order (although in the example data I've shown, all the data is already in the correct order!)
What I’d like to do is get the SUM of each fldThree, but only from the first occurrence of each fldOne.
So, SUM the first Dandelion, Daisy and Rose that I come across. E.g.
99+88+55
At the moment, I’m doing this programmatically; return a RecordSet from the Select statement above, and MoveNext through each returned row, only adding fldThree to my ‘total’ if I’ve never seen the text from fldOne before. It works, but most of the Select queries return over 100k rows and so it’s quite slow (slow being a relative term – it takes about 50 seconds on my setup).
The actual select statement (selecting about 100k rows from 1.5m total rows) completes in under a second which is fine. The current programatic loop is quite small and tight, it's just the number of loops through the RecordSet that takes time. I'm using adOpenForwardOnly and adLockReadOnly when I open the record set.
This is a routine that basically runs continuously as more data is added, and also the fldTwo 'times' vary, so I can't be more specific with the Select statement.
Everything that I’ve so far managed to do natively with SQL seems to run quickly and I’m hoping I can take the logic (and work) away from my program and get SQL to take the strain.
Thanks in advance
The best way to approach this is with window functions. These let you enumerate the rows within a group. However, you need some way to identify the first row. SQL tables are inherently unordered, so you need a column to specify the ordering. Here are some ideas.
If you have an id column, which is defined as an identity so it is autoincremented:
select sum(fldThree)
from (select m.*,
row_number() over (partition by fldOne order by id) as seqnum
from tblMain m
) m
where seqnum = 1
To get an arbitrary row, you could use:
select sum(fldThree)
from (select m.*,
row_number() over (partition by fldOne order by (select NULL as noorder)) as seqnum
from tblMain m
) m
where seqnum = 1
Or, if FldTwo has the values in reverse order:
select sum(fldThree)
from (select m.*,
row_number() over (partition by fldOne order by FldTwo desc) as seqnum
from tblMain m
) m
where seqnum = 1
Maybe this?
SELECT SUM(fldThree) as ExpectedSum
FROM
(SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY fldOne ORDER BY fldTwo DSEC) Rn
FROM tblMain) as A
WHERE Rn = 1

How to group by a column

Hi I know how to use the group by clause for sql. I am not sure how to explain this so Ill draw some charts. Here is my original data:
Name Location
----------------------
user1 1
user1 9
user1 3
user2 1
user2 10
user3 97
Here is the output I need
Name Location
----------------------
user1 1
9
3
user2 1
10
user3 97
Is this even possible?
The normal method for this is to handle it in the presentation layer, not the database layer.
Reasons:
The Name field is a property of that data row
If you leave the Name out, how do you know what Location goes with which name?
You are implicitly relying on the order of the data, which in SQL is a very bad practice (since there is no inherent ordering to the returned data)
Any solution will need to involve a cursor or a loop, which is not what SQL is optimized for - it likes working in SETS not on individual rows
Hope this helps
SELECT A.FINAL_NAME, A.LOCATION
FROM (SELECT DISTINCT DECODE((LAG(YT.NAME, 1) OVER(ORDER BY YT.NAME)),
YT.NAME,
NULL,
YT.NAME) AS FINAL_NAME,
YT.NAME,
YT.LOCATION
FROM YOUR_TABLE_7 YT) A
As Jirka correctly pointed out, I was using the Outer select, distinct and raw Name unnecessarily. My mistake was that as I used DISTINCT , I got the resulted sorted like
1 1
2 user2 1
3 user3 97
4 user1 1
5 3
6 9
7 10
I wanted to avoid output like this.
Hence I added the raw id and outer select
However , removing the DISTINCT solves the problem.
Hence only this much is enough
SELECT DECODE((LAG(YT.NAME, 1) OVER(ORDER BY YT.NAME)),
YT.NAME,
NULL,
YT.NAME) AS FINAL_NAME,
YT.LOCATION
FROM SO_BUFFER_TABLE_7 YT
Thanks Jirka
If you're using straight SQL*Plus to make your report (don't laugh, you can do some pretty cool stuff with it), you can do this with the BREAK command:
SQL> break on name
SQL> WITH q AS (
SELECT 'user1' NAME, 1 LOCATION FROM dual
UNION ALL
SELECT 'user1', 9 FROM dual
UNION ALL
SELECT 'user1', 3 FROM dual
UNION ALL
SELECT 'user2', 1 FROM dual
UNION ALL
SELECT 'user2', 10 FROM dual
UNION ALL
SELECT 'user3', 97 FROM dual
)
SELECT NAME,LOCATION
FROM q
ORDER BY name;
NAME LOCATION
----- ----------
user1 1
9
3
user2 1
10
user3 97
6 rows selected.
SQL>
I cannot but agree with the other commenters that this kind of problem does not look like it should ever be solved using SQL, but let us face it anyway.
SELECT
CASE main.name WHERE preceding_id IS NULL THEN main.name ELSE null END,
main.location
FROM mytable main LEFT JOIN mytable preceding
ON main.name = preceding.name AND MIN(preceding.id) < main.id
GROUP BY main.id, main.name, main.location, preceding.name
ORDER BY main.id
The GROUP BY clause is not responsible for the grouping job, at least not directly. In the first approximation, an outer join to the same table (LEFT JOIN below) can be used to determine on which row a particular value occurs for the first time. This is what we are after. This assumes that there are some unique id values that make it possible to arbitrarily order all the records. (The ORDER BY clause does NOT do this; it orders the output, not the input of the whole computation, but it is still necessary to make sure that the output is presented correctly, because the remaining SQL does not imply any particular order of processing.)
As you can see, there is still a GROUP BY clause in the SQL, but with a perhaps unexpected purpose. Its job is to "undo" a side effect of the LEFT JOIN, which is duplication of all main records that have many "preceding" ( = successfully joined) records.
This is quite normal with GROUP BY. The typical effect of a GROUP BY clause is a reduction of the number of records; and impossibility to query or test columns NOT listed in the GROUP BY clause, except through aggregate functions like COUNT, MIN, MAX, or SUM. This is because these columns really represent "groups of values" due to the GROUP BY, not just specific values.
If you are using SQL*Plus, use the BREAK function. In this case, break on NAME.
If you are using another reporting tool, you may be able to compare the "name" field to the previous record and suppress printing when they are equal.
If you use GROUP BY, output rows are sorted according to the GROUP BY columns as if you had an ORDER BY for the same columns. To avoid the overhead of sorting that GROUP BY produces, add ORDER BY NULL:
SELECT a, COUNT(b) FROM test_table GROUP BY a ORDER BY NULL;
Relying on implicit GROUP BY sorting in MySQL 5.6 is deprecated. To achieve a specific sort order of grouped results, it is preferable to use an explicit ORDER BY clause. GROUP BY sorting is a MySQL extension that may change in a future release; for example, to make it possible for the optimizer to order groupings in whatever manner it deems most efficient and to avoid the sorting overhead.
For full information - http://academy.comingweek.com/sql-groupby-clause/
SQL GROUP BY STATEMENT
SQL GROUP BY clause is used in collaboration with the SELECT statement to arrange identical data into groups.
Syntax:
1. SELECT column_nm, aggregate_function(column_nm) FROM table_nm WHERE column_nm operator value GROUP BY column_nm;
Example :
To understand the GROUP BY clauserefer the sample database.Below table showing fields from “order” table:
1. |EMPORD_ID|employee1ID|customerID|shippers_ID|
Below table showing fields from “shipper” table:
1. | shippers_ID| shippers_Name |
Below table showing fields from “table_emp1” table:
1. | employee1ID| first1_nm | last1_nm |
Example :
To find the number of orders sent by each shipper.
1. SELECT shipper.shippers_Name, COUNT (orders.EMPORD_ID) AS No_of_orders FROM orders LEFT JOIN shipper ON orders.shippers_ID = shipper.shippers_ID GROUP BY shippers_Name;
1. | shippers_Name | No_of_orders |
Example :
To use GROUP BY statement on more than one column.
1. SELECT shipper.shippers_Name, table_emp1.last1_nm, COUNT (orders.EMPORD_ID) AS No_of_orders FROM ((orders INNER JOIN shipper ON orders.shippers_ID=shipper.shippers_ID) INNER JOIN table_emp1 ON orders.employee1ID = table_emp1.employee1ID)
2. GROUP BY shippers_Name,last1_nm;
| shippers_Name | last1_nm |No_of_orders |
for more clarification refer my link
http://academy.comingweek.com/sql-groupby-clause/