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select bottom rows in natural order
People imagine that i have this table :
persons
columns of the table are NAME and ID
and i insert this
insert into persons values ('name','id');
insert into persons values ('John','1');
insert into persons values ('Jack','3');
insert into persons values ('Alice','2');
How can i select this information order by the insertion? My query would like :
NAME ID
name id
John 1
Jack 3
Alice 2
Without indexs (autoincrements), it's possible?
I'm pretty sure its not. From my knowldege sql data order is not sequetional with respect to insertion. The only idea I have is along with each insertion have a timestamp and sort by that time stamp
This is not possible without adding a column or table containing a timestamp. You could add a timestamp column or create another table containing IDs and a timestamp and insert in to that at the same time.
You cannot have any assumptions about how the DBMS will store data and retrieve them without specifying order by clause. I.e. PostgreSQL uses MVCC and if you update any row, physically a new copy of a row will be created at the end of a table datafile. Using a plain select causes pg to use sequence scan scenario - it means that the last updated row will be returned as the last one.
I have to agree with the other answers, Without a specific field/column todo this... well its a unreliable way... While i have not actually ever had a table without an index before i think..
you will need something to index it by, You can go with many other approaches and methods... For example, you use some form of concat/join of strings and then split/separate the query results later.
--EDIT--
For what reason do you wish not to use these methods? time/autoinc
Without storing some sort of order information during insert, the database does not automatically keep track of every record ever inserted and their order (this is probably a good thing ;) ). Autoincrement cannot be avoided... even with timestamp, they can hold same value.
Related
How do I insert a row between here?
Data is not intended to be stored SQL tables in any particular order, so it's not appropriate to insert a row at a particular position. You use an SQL SELECT query to extract the data you want and ORDER BY to specify how it is sorted. If you really want to have this row in a particular position, add an ID column as the primary key and number the ID column values in the sequence that you want. Whatever you are using to view your rows will order them by the ID column by default. However, you're going to experience this same problem every time you want to add a new row as SQL tables are not intended to be used in this way.
I have a table with 4 columns. The first column is unique for each row, but it's a string (URL format).
I want to update my table, but instead of using "WHERE", I want to update the rows in order.
The first query will update the first row, the second query updates the second row and so on.
What's the SQL code for that? I'm using Sqlite.
Edit: My table schema
CREATE table (
url varchar(150),
views int(5),
clicks int(5)
)
Edit2: What I'm doing right now is a loop of SQL queries
update table set views = 5, click = 10 where url = "http://someurl.com";
There is around 4 million records in the database. It's taking around 16 seconds in my server to make the update. Since the loop update the row in order, so the first query update the first row; I'm thinking if updating the rows in order could be faster than using the WHERE clause which needs to browse 4 million rows.
You can't do what you want without using WHERE as this is the only way to select rows from a table for reading, updating or deleting. So you will want to use:
UPDATE table SET url = ... WHERE url = '<whatever>'
HOWEVER... SqlLite has an extra feature - the autogenerated column, ROWID. You can use this column in queries. You don't see this data by default, so if you want the data within it you need to explicitly request it, e.g:
SELECT ROWID, * FROM table
What this means is that you may be able to do what you want referencing this column directly:
UPDATE table SET url = ... WHERE ROWID = 1
you still need to use the WHERE clause, but this allows you to access the rows in insert order without doing anything else.
CAVEAT
ROWID effectively stores the INSERT order of the rows. If you delete rows from the table, the ROWIDs for remaining rows will NOT change - hence it is possible to have gaps in the ROWID sequence. This is by design and there is no workaround short of re-creating the table and re-populating the data.
PORTABILITY
Note that this only applies to SQLite - you may not be able to do the same thing with other SQL engines should you ever need to port this. It would be MUCH better to add an EXPLICIT auto-number column (aka an IDENTITY field) that you can use and manage.
I want to change the order of column e.g. name is first column of my table and there are 10 other columns in table I want to insert a new column in 2nd position after name column.
How is this possible?
1 - It's not possible without rebuilding the table, as Martin rightly points out.
2 - It's a good practice anyways to specify what fields you want and in what order in your SELECT statements as n8wrl points out.
3 - If you really really need a fixed order on your fields, could create a view that selects the fields you want in the order you want.
Like the rows in the table, there is no meaning to the order of the columns. In fact, it is best to specify the order you want the columns in your select statements rather than using select *, so you can 'insert' new columns wherever you want just by writing your SELECT statements accordingly.
Its possible to change the order. In some instances it really matters. have a personal experience.
Anyway..this query works fine.
ALTER TABLE user MODIFY Name VARCHAR(150) AFTER address;
You can achieve this by following these steps:
remove all foreign keys and primary key of the original table.
rename the original table.
using CTAS, create the original table in the order you want.
drop the old table.
apply all constraints back to the original table.
I have a table, and there is no column which stores a field of when the record/row was added. How can I get the latest entry into this table? There would be two cases in this:
Loop through entire table and get the largest ID, if a numeric ID is being used as the identifier. But this would be very inefficient for a large table.
If a random string is being used as the identifier (which is probably very, very bad practise), then this would require more thinking (I personally have no idea other than my first point above).
If I have one field in each row of my table which is numeric, and I want to add it up to get a total (so row 1 has a field which is 3, row 2 has a field which is 7, I want to add all these up and return the total), how would this be done?
Thanks
1) If the id is incremental, "select max(id) as latest from mytable". If a random string was used, there should still be an incremental numeric primary key in addition. Add it. There is no reason not to have one, and databases are optimized to use such a primary key for relations.
2) "select sum(mynumfield) as total from mytable"
for the last thing use a SUM()
SELECT SUM(OrderPrice) AS OrderTotal FROM Orders
assuming they are all in the same column.
Your first question is a bit unclear, but if you want to know when a row was inserted (or updated), then the only way is to record the time when the insert/update occurs. Typically, you use a DEFAULT constraint for inserts and a trigger for updates.
If you want to know the maximum value (which may not necessarily be the last inserted row) then use MAX, as others have said:
SELECT MAX(SomeColumn) FROM dbo.SomeTable
If the column is indexed, MSSQL does not need to read the whole table to answer this query.
For the second question, just do this:
SELECT SUM(SomeColumn) FROM dbo.SomeTable
You might want to look into some SQL books and tutorials to pick up the basic syntax.
What would be the correct universal SQL construct to get the last row inserted (or it's primary key). The ID might be autogenerated by a sequence but I do not want to deal with the sequence at all! I need to get the ID by querying the table. Alternatively, INSERT might be somehow extended to return the ID. Assume I am always inserting a single row. The solution should work with most RDBMS!
the best way is to depend on the sequence like:
select Max(ID) from tableName
but If you don't want to deal with it, you can add new timestamp column to your table and then select max from that column.
like this way
select Max(TimestampField) from tableName