In postgresql, how can I fill in missing values within a column? - sql

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to fill in values that are missing from one column with the non-missing values from other rows that have the same value on a given column. For instance, in the below example, I'd want all the "1" values to be equal to Bob and all of the "2" values to be equal to John
ID # | Name
-------|-----
1 | Bob
1 | (null)
1 | (null)
2 | John
2 | (null)
2 | (null)
`
EDIT: One caveat is that I'm using postgresql 8.4 with Greenplum and so correlated subqueries are not supported.

Answer 1

CREATE TABLE bobjohn
( ID INTEGER NOT NULL
, zname varchar
);
INSERT INTO bobjohn(id, zname) VALUES
(1,'Bob') ,(1, NULL) ,(1, NULL)
,(2,'John') ,(2, NULL) ,(2, NULL)
;
UPDATE bobjohn dst
SET zname = src.zname
FROM bobjohn src
WHERE dst.id = src.id
AND dst.zname IS NULL
AND src.zname IS NOT NULL
;
SELECT * FROM bobjohn;
NOTE: this query will fail if more than one name exists for a given Id. (and it won't touch records for which no non-null name exists)
If you are on a postgres version >-9, you could use a CTE to fetch the source tuples (this is equivalent to a subquery, but is easier to write and read (IMHO). The CTE also tackles the duplicate values-problem (in a rather crude way):
--
-- CTE's dont work in update queries for Postgres version below 9
--
WITH uniq AS (
SELECT DISTINCT id
-- if there are more than one names for a given Id: pick the lowest
, min(zname) as zname
FROM bobjohn
WHERE zname IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY id
)
UPDATE bobjohn dst
SET zname = src.zname
FROM uniq src
WHERE dst.id = src.id
AND dst.zname IS NULL
;
SELECT * FROM bobjohn;

Answer 2

UPDATE tbl
SET name = x.name
FROM (
SELECT DISTINCT ON (id) id, name
FROM tbl
WHERE name IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY id, name
) x
WHERE x.id = tbl.id
AND tbl.name IS NULL;
DISTINCT ON does the job alone. Not need for additional aggregation.
In case of multiple values for name, the alphabetically first one (according to the current locale) is picked - that's what the ORDER BY id, name is for. If name is unambiguous you can omit that line.
Also, if there is at least one non-null value per id, you can omit WHERE name IS NOT NULL.

Answer 3

If you know for a fact that there are no conflicting values (multiple rows with the same ID but different, non-null names) then something like this will update the table appropriately:
UPDATE some_table AS t1
SET name = (
SELECT name
FROM some_table AS t2
WHERE t1.id = t2.id
AND name IS NOT NULL
LIMIT 1
)
WHERE name IS NULL;
If you only want to query the table and have this information filled in on the fly, you can use a similar query:
SELECT
t1.id,
(
SELECT name
FROM some_table AS t2
WHERE t1.id = t2.id
AND name IS NOT NULL
LIMIT 1
) AS name
FROM some_table AS t1;