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.
Related
Hey guys, maybe this is a basic SQL qn. Say I have this very simple table, I need to run a simple sql statement to return a result like this:
Basically, the its to dedup Name based on it's row's Value column, whichever is larger should stay.
Thanks!
Framing the problem correctly would help you figure it out.
"Deduplication" suggests altering the table - starting with a state with duplicates, ending with a state without them. Usually done in three steps (getting the rows without duplicates into temp table, removing original table, renaming temp table).
"Removing rows with duplicated column values" also suggests alteration of data and derails train of thought.
What you do want is to get the entire table, and in cases where the columns you care about have multiple values attached get the highest one. One could say... group by columns you care about? And attach them to the highest value, a maximum value?
select id,name,max(value) from table group by id,name
I have an order table in sql server and I need for the order number primary key to be like this
OR\20160202\01
OR is just a string
20160202 is the Date
01 is sequence number for that day
for second Order record the same day it would be
OR\20160202\02 and so on..
backlashes should also be included...
Whats the way to go about creating such a field in sql server (using version 2016)
EDIT: to add more context to what sequence number is, its just a way for this field composite or not to be unique. without a sequence number i would get duplicate records in DB because i could have many records the same day so date would remain the same thus it would be something like
OR\20160202 for all rows for that particular day so it would be duplicate. Adding a "sequence" number helps solve this.
The best way is to not create such a column in SQL. You're effectively combining multiple pieces of data into the same column, which shouldn't happen in a relational database for many reasons. A column should hold one piece of data.
Instead, create a composite primary key across all of the necessary columns.
composite pk
order varchar(20)
orDate DateTime
select *
, row_number() over (partition by cast(orDate as Date) order by orDate) as seq
from table
Will leave it to you on how to concatenate the data
That is presentation thing - don't make it a problem for the PK
About "sequence number for that day" (department, year, country, ...).
Almost every time I discussed such a requirement with end users it turned out to be just misunderstanding of how shared database works, a vague attempt to repeat old (separate databases, EXCEL files or even paper work) tricks on shared database.
So i second Tom H and others, first try not to do it.
If nevertheless you must do it, for legal or other unnegotiatable reasons then i hope you are on 2012+. Create SEQUENCE for every day.
Formatted PK is not a good idea.Composite key is a better approach.The combination of day as a date column and order number as a bigint column should be used.This helps in improving the query performance too.
You might want to explore 'Date Dimension' table. Date Dimension is commonly used table in data warehousing. It stores all the days of the calendar(based on your choice of years) and numeric generated keys for these days. Check this post on date dimension. It talks about creating one in SQL SERVER.
https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/4054/creating-a-date-dimension-or-calendar-table-in-sql-server/
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Possible Duplicate:
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.
This is not query related, what I would like to know is if it's possible to have a field in a column being displayed as a sum of other fields. A bit like Excel does.
As an example, I have two tables:
Recipes
nrecepie integer
name varchar(255)
time integer
and the other
Instructions
nintrucion integer
nrecepie integer
time integer
So, basically as a recipe has n instructions I would like that
recipes.time = sum(intructions.time)
Is this possible to be done in create table script?? if so, how?
You can use a view:
CREATE VIEW recipes_with_time AS
SELECT nrecepie, name, SUM(Instructions.time) AS total_time
FROM Recepies
JOIN Instructions USING (nrecepie)
GROUP BY Recepies.nrecepie
If you really want to have that data in the real table, you must use a trigger.
This could be done with an INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE trigger. Every time data is changed in table Instructions, the trigger would run and update the time value in Recepies.
You can use a trigger to update the time column everytime the instructions table is changed, but a more "normal" (less redundant) way would be to compute the time column via a group by clause on a join between the instructions and recepies [sic] table.
In general, you want to avoid situations like that because you're storing derived information (there are exceptions for performance reasons). Therefore, the best solution is to create a view as suggested by AndreKR. This provides an always-correct total that is as easy to SELECT from the database as if it were in an actual, stored column.
Depends pn the database vendor... In SQL Server for example, you can create a column that calculates it's value based on the values of other columns in the same row. they are called calculated columns, and you do it like this:
Create Table MyTable
(
colA Integer,
colB Integer,
colC Intgeer,
SumABC As colA + colB + colC
)
In general just put the column name you want, the word 'as' and the formula or equation to ghenerate the value. This approach uses no aditonal storage, it calculates thevalue each time someone executes a select aganist it, so the table profile remains narrower, and you get better performance. The only downsode is you cannot put an index on a calculated column. (although there is a flag in SQL server that allows you to specify to the database that it should persist the value whenever it is created or updated... In which case it can be indexed)
In your example, however, you are accessing data from multiple rows in another table. To do this, you need a trigger as suggested by other respondants.
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