could you please explain why mysql count function without providing any table name gives 1 as value?
SELECT COUNT(*);
Result: 1
Because in mysql select constant_value command is valid (such as select 2 will return 2) and will return 1 row. Count() function without group by will collapse the resultset and count the number of items in the resultset. In this case 1 row would be returned and count(*) counts that.
Normally all selects are of the form SELECT [columns, scalar computations on columns, grouped computations on columns, or scalar computations] FROM [table or joins of tables, etc]
Because this allows plain scalar computations we can do something like SELECT 1 + 1 FROM SomeTable and it will return a recordset with the value 2 for every row in the table SomeTable.
Now, if we didn't care about any table, but just wanted to do our scalar computed we might want to do something like SELECT 1 + 1. This isn't allowed by the standard, but it is useful and most databases allow it (Oracle doesn't unless it's changed recently, at least it used to not).
Hence such bare SELECTs are treated as if they had a from clause which specified a table with one row and no column (impossible of course, but it does the trick). Hence SELECT 1 + 1 becomes SELECT 1 + 1 FROM ImaginaryTableWithOneRow which returns a single row with a single column with the value 2.
Mostly we don't think about this, we just get used to the fact that bare SELECTs give results and don't even think about the fact that there must be some one-row thing selected to return one row.
In doing SELECT COUNT() you did the equivalent of SELECT COUNT() FROM ImaginaryTableWithOneRow which of course returns 1.
Reference
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could you please explain why mysql count function without providing any table name gives 1 as value?
SELECT COUNT(*);
Result: 1
Because in mysql select constant_value command is valid (such as select 2 will return 2) and will return 1 row. Count() function without group by will collapse the resultset and count the number of items in the resultset. In this case 1 row would be returned and count(*) counts that.
Normally all selects are of the form SELECT [columns, scalar computations on columns, grouped computations on columns, or scalar computations] FROM [table or joins of tables, etc]
Because this allows plain scalar computations we can do something like SELECT 1 + 1 FROM SomeTable and it will return a recordset with the value 2 for every row in the table SomeTable.
Now, if we didn't care about any table, but just wanted to do our scalar computed we might want to do something like SELECT 1 + 1. This isn't allowed by the standard, but it is useful and most databases allow it (Oracle doesn't unless it's changed recently, at least it used to not).
Hence such bare SELECTs are treated as if they had a from clause which specified a table with one row and no column (impossible of course, but it does the trick). Hence SELECT 1 + 1 becomes SELECT 1 + 1 FROM ImaginaryTableWithOneRow which returns a single row with a single column with the value 2.
Mostly we don't think about this, we just get used to the fact that bare SELECTs give results and don't even think about the fact that there must be some one-row thing selected to return one row.
In doing SELECT COUNT() you did the equivalent of SELECT COUNT() FROM ImaginaryTableWithOneRow which of course returns 1.
Reference
when exucute the sql statement list below in mysql, there is only one row returned. And I looked up the mysql document and didn't find the defined behavior of the statement. Is there any syntax error in this statement?
select * from Deal group by id and 1;
Demo on sqlfriddle
Look at what happens when you use the following:
select *, id and 1 as newCol from Deal
Fiddle
newCol equals 1 for each row. That's because mysql evaluates that as a boolean. This explains why you only return a single result with group by, you are grouping by the same value in every record.
Perhaps you are wondering what happens when you group by a number with a comma instead of using and:
select * from Deal group by id, 2
More fiddle
That groups by both the id and the second field in your table (price).
If I have a table like so:
Name Type Val
Mike A 1
John A 4
Jerry 6
(Notice that Jerry has an empty string for Type)
And I do a query like
Select sum(Val), Type from table
How does MySQL choose which Type to put in the one row result? If I wanted to return the "non blanked"
To give some context, the Type for every row in this table should actually be the same, but there used to be a bug where there are now some values that are blank. (Note that the sum should still include the blanks)
I know I can do this in two queries, and just select Type from table where Type!="" but I was curious if there was a trick to do it in that single query.
This is valid SQL in MySQL. You are aggregating all rows to one row (by using the aggregate function SUM and having no GROUP BY clause).
Any value that is neither in a GROUP BY clause nor being aggregated is a random one. The type you get is just one of those types in the table; it could even be another one when you execute the same query again.
You can use max(type) or min(type) for instance to get the value you are after.
Lets say I have a table with a column of ages..
Here is the list of ages
1
2
3
1
1
3
I want the SQL to count how many of age 1s, how many of 2s and 3s.
The code:
Select count(age) as age1 where age = ‘1’;
Select count(age) as age2 where age = ‘2’;
Select count(age) as age3 where age = ‘3’;
Should work but would there be a way to just display it all using only 1 line of code?
This is an instance where the GROUP BY clause really shines:
SELECT age, COUNT(age)
FROM table_name
GROUP BY age
Just an additional tip:
You shouldn't use single quotes here in your query:
WHERE age = '1';
This is because age is an INT data type and therefore does not have single quotes. MySQL will implicitly convert age to the correct data type for you - and it's a negligible amount of overhead here. But imagine if you were doing a JOIN of two tables with millions of rows, then the overhead introduced would be something to consider.
Try this ,if the count is limited to three ages ,also using aggregate functions without grouping them will result in a single row,you can use SUM() with the condition which will result in a boolean and you can get the count based on your criteria
Select SUM(age = '1') as age1,
SUM(age = '2') as age2,
SUM(age = '3') as age3
from table
SELECT SUM(CASE WHEN age = 1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS age1,
SUM(CASE WHEN age = 2 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS age2,
SUM(CASE WHEN age = 3 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS age3
FROM YourTable
If your query should return only one column (age in this case, you can use Count+groupby):
SELECT age, Count(1) as qty
FROM [yourTable]
GROUP BY age
Remember you must include any additional column in your group by condition.
Select age as Age_Group, count(age) as Total_count from table1 group by age;
select age, count(age) from SomeTable group by age
http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/b40da/2
The group by clause works like this:
When using aggregate functions, like the count function without a group by clause the function will apply to the entire dataset determined by the from and where clauses. A count will for instance count the number of rows in the result set, and sum over a specfic column will sum all the rows in the result set.
What the group by clause allows us to do, is to divide the result set determined by the from and where clause into partitions, so that the aggregate functions no longer applies to the result set as a whole, but rather within each partition of the result set.
When you specify a column to group by, what you are saying is something like "for each distinct value of column x in the result set, create a partition containing any row in the result set with this particular value in column x". Then, instead of yielding one result covering the entire resultset, aggregate functions will yield one result for each distinct value of column x in the result set.
With your example input of:
1
2
3
1
1
3
let's analyze the above query. As always, we should look at the from clause and the where clause first. The from clause tells us that we are selecting from SomeTable and only this, and the lack of a where clause tells us that we are selecting from the full contents of SomeTable.
Next, we'll look at the group by clause. It's present, and it groups by the age column, which is the only column in our example. The presence of the group by clause changes our dataset completely! Instead of selecting from the entire row set of SomeTable, we are now selecting from a set of partitions, one for each distinct value of the age-column in our original result set (which was every row in SomeTable).
At last, we'll look at the select-clause. Now, since we are selecting from partitions and not regular rows, the select-clause has fewer options for what it can contain, actually it only has 2: The column that it is grouped by, or an aggregate function.
Now, in our example we only have one column, but consider that we had another column, like here:
http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/d5479/2
Now, imagine that in our data set we have two rows, both with age='1', but with different values in the other column. If we were to include this other column in a query that is grouped by the age-column (which we now know will return one row for each partition over the age-column), which value should be presented in the result? It makes no sense to include other column than the one you grouped by. (I'll leave multiple columns in the group by clause out of this, in my experience one usually just wants one..)
But back to our select-clause, knowing our dataset has the distinct values {1, 2, 3} in the age-column, we should expect to get 3 rows in our result set. The first thing to be selected is the age-column, which will yield the values [1, 2, 3]´ in the three rows. Next in theselect-list is an aggregate functioncount(age), which we now know will count the number of rows in each partition. So, for the row in the result whereage='1', it will count the number of rows withage='1', for the row whereage='2'it will count the number of rows whereage='2'`, and so on.
The result would look something like this:
age count(age)
1 3
2 1
3 2
(of course you are free to override the name of the second column in the result, with the as-operator..)
And that concludes today's lesson.
I have seen many queries with something as follows.
Select 1
From table
What does this 1 mean, how will it be executed and, what will it return?
Also, in what type of scenarios, can this be used?
select 1 from table will return the constant 1 for every row of the table. It's useful when you want to cheaply determine if record matches your where clause and/or join.
SELECT 1 FROM TABLE_NAME means, "Return 1 from the table". It is pretty unremarkable on its own, so normally it will be used with WHERE and often EXISTS (as #gbn notes, this is not necessarily best practice, it is, however, common enough to be noted, even if it isn't really meaningful (that said, I will use it because others use it and it is "more obvious" immediately. Of course, that might be a viscous chicken vs. egg issue, but I don't generally dwell)).
SELECT * FROM TABLE1 T1 WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT 1 FROM TABLE2 T2 WHERE T1.ID= T2.ID
);
Basically, the above will return everything from table 1 which has a corresponding ID from table 2. (This is a contrived example, obviously, but I believe it conveys the idea. Personally, I would probably do the above as SELECT * FROM TABLE1 T1 WHERE ID IN (SELECT ID FROM TABLE2); as I view that as FAR more explicit to the reader unless there were a circumstantially compelling reason not to).
EDIT
There actually is one case which I forgot about until just now. In the case where you are trying to determine existence of a value in the database from an outside language, sometimes SELECT 1 FROM TABLE_NAME will be used. This does not offer significant benefit over selecting an individual column, but, depending on implementation, it may offer substantial gains over doing a SELECT *, simply because it is often the case that the more columns that the DB returns to a language, the larger the data structure, which in turn mean that more time will be taken.
If you mean something like
SELECT * FROM AnotherTable
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM table WHERE...)
then it's a myth that the 1 is better than
SELECT * FROM AnotherTable
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT * FROM table WHERE...)
The 1 or * in the EXISTS is ignored and you can write this as per Page 191 of the ANSI SQL 1992 Standard:
SELECT * FROM AnotherTable
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1/0 FROM table WHERE...)
it does what it says - it will always return the integer 1. It's used to check whether a record matching your where clause exists.
select 1 from table is used by some databases as a query to test a connection to see if it's alive, often used when retrieving or returning a connection to / from a connection pool.
The result is 1 for every record in the table.
To be slightly more specific, you would use this to do
SELECT 1 FROM MyUserTable WHERE user_id = 33487
instead of doing
SELECT * FROM MyUserTable WHERE user_id = 33487
because you don't care about looking at the results. Asking for the number 1 is very easy for the database (since it doesn't have to do any look-ups).
Although it is not widely known, a query can have a HAVING clause without a GROUP BY clause.
In such circumstances, the HAVING clause is applied to the entire set. Clearly, the SELECT clause cannot refer to any column, otherwise you would (correct) get the error, "Column is invalid in select because it is not contained in the GROUP BY" etc.
Therefore, a literal value must be used (because SQL doesn't allow a resultset with zero columns -- why?!) and the literal value 1 (INTEGER) is commonly used: if the HAVING clause evaluates TRUE then the resultset will be one row with one column showing the value 1, otherwise you get the empty set.
Example: to find whether a column has more than one distinct value:
SELECT 1
FROM tableA
HAVING MIN(colA) < MAX(colA);
If you don't know there exist any data in your table or not, you can use following query:
SELECT cons_value FROM table_name;
For an Example:
SELECT 1 FROM employee;
It will return a column which contains the total number of rows & all rows have the same constant value 1 (for this time it returns 1 for all rows);
If there is no row in your table it will return nothing.
So, we use this SQL query to know if there is any data in the table & the number of rows indicates how many rows exist in this table.
If you just want to check a true or false based on the WHERE clause, select 1 from table where condition is the cheapest way.
This means that You want a value "1" as output or Most of the time used as Inner Queries because for some reason you want to calculate the outer queries based on the result of inner queries.. not all the time you use 1 but you have some specific values...
This will statically gives you output as value 1.
I see it is always used in SQL injection,such as:
www.urlxxxxx.com/xxxx.asp?id=99 union select 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 from database;
These numbers can be used to guess where the database exists and guess the column name of the database you specified.And the values of the tables.
it simple means that you are retrieving the number first column from table ,,,,means
select Emply_num,Empl_no From Employees ;
here you are using select 1 from Employees;
that means you are retrieving the Emply_num column.
Thanks
The reason is another one, at least for MySQL. This is from the MySQL manual
InnoDB computes index cardinality values for a table the first time that table is accessed after startup, instead of storing such values in the table. This step can take significant time on systems that partition the data into many tables. Since this overhead only applies to the initial table open operation, to “warm up” a table for later use, access it immediately after startup by issuing a statement such as SELECT 1 FROM tbl_name LIMIT 1
This is just used for convenience with IF EXISTS(). Otherwise you can go with
select * from [table_name]
Image In the case of 'IF EXISTS', we just need know that any row with specified condition exists or not doesn't matter what is content of row.
select 1 from Users
above example code, returns no. of rows equals to no. of users with 1 in single column