Using 'GROUP BY' while preferring rows associated in another table - mysql

Question

I have a table tbl_entries with the following structure:
+----+------+------+------+
| id | col1 | col2 | col3 |
+----+------+------+------+
| 11 | a | b | c |
| 12 | d | e | a |
| 13 | a | b | c |
| 14 | X | e | 2 |
| 15 | a | b | c |
+----+------+------+------+
And another table tbl_reviewlist with the following structure:
+----+-------+------+------+------+
| id | entid | cola | colb | colc |
+----+-------+------+------+------+
| 1 | 12 | N | Y | Y |
| 2 | 13 | Y | N | Y |
| 3 | 14 | Y | N | N |
+----+-------+------+------+------+
Basically, tbl_reviewlist contains reviews about the entries in tbl_entries. However, for some known reason, the entries in tbl_entries are duplicated. I am extracting the unique records by the following query:
SELECT * FROM `tbl_entries` GROUP BY `col1`, `col2`, `col3`;
However, any one of the duplicate rows from tbl_entries will be returned no matter they have been reviewed or not. I want the query to prefer those rows which have been reviewed. How can I do that?
EDIT: I want to prefer rows which have been reviewed but if there are rows which have not been reviewed yet it should return those as well.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Have you actually tried anything?
A hint: The SQL standard requires that every column in the result set of a query with a group by clause must be either
a grouping column
an aggregate function — sum(), count(), etc.,
a constant value/literal, or
an expression derived solely from the above.
Some broken implementations (and I believe MySQL is one of them) allow other columns to be included and offer their own...creative...behavior. If you think about it, group by essentially says to do the following:
Order this table by the grouping expressions
Partition it into subsets based on the group by sequence
Collapse each such partition into a single row computing the aggregate expressions as you go.
Once you've done that, what does it mean to ask for something that isn't uniform across the collapsed group partition?
If you have a table foo containing columns A, B, C, D and E and say something like
select A,B,C,D,E from foo group by A,B,C
per the standard, you should get a compile error. Deviant implementations [usually] treat this sort of query as the [rough] equivalent of
select *
from foo t
join ( select A,B,C
from foo
group by A,B,C
) x on x.A = t.A
and x.B = t.B
and x.C = t.C
But I wouldn't necessarily count on that without review the documentation for the specific implementation that your are using.
If you want to find just reviewed entries, then something like this:
select *
from tbl_entries t
where exists ( select *
from tbl_reviewlist x
where x.entid = t.id
)
will do you. If, however, you want to find reviewed entries that are duplicated on col1, col2 and col3 then something like this should do you:
select *
from tbl_entries t
join ( select col1,col2,col3
from tbl_entries x
group by col1,col2,col3
having count(*) > 1
) d on d.col1 = t.col1
and d.col2 = t.col2
and d.col3 = t.col3
where exists ( select *
from tbl_reviewlist x
where x.entid = t.id
)
Since your problem statement is rather unclear, another take might be something along these lines:
select t.col1 ,
t.col2 ,
t.col3 ,
t.duplicate_count ,
coalesce(x.review_count,0) as review_count
from ( select col1 ,
col2 ,
col3 ,
count(*) as duplicate_count
from tbl_entries
group by col1 ,
col2 ,
col3
) t
left join ( select cola, colb, colc , count(*) as review_count
from tbl_reviewList
group by cola, colb, colc
having count(*) > 1
) x on x.cola = t.col1
and x.colb = t.col2
and x.colc = t.col3
order by sign(coalesce(x.review_count,0)) desc ,
t.col1 ,
t.col2 ,
t.col3
This query
summarizes the entries table, developing a count of how many time seach col1/2/3 combination exists.
summarizes the review table, developing a count of reviews for each cola/b/c combination
joins them together matching cols a:1, b:2 c:3
orders them
preferring reviewed items to non-reviewed items by placing them first,
then by the col1/2/3 values.

Answer 2

I think there's a way with less repetition, but this should be a start:
select
tbl_entries.ID,
col1,
col2,
col3,
cola, -- ... you get the idea ...
from (
select coalesce(min(entid), min(tbl_entries.ID)) as favID
from tbl_entries left join tbl_reviewlist on entid = tbl_entries.ID
group by col1, col2, col3
) as A join tbl_entries on tbl_entries.ID = favID
left join tbl_reviewlist on entid = tbl_entries.ID
Basically you distill the desired output to a list of core ID's and then re-map back to the data...

Answer 3

SELECT e.col1, e.col2, e.col3,
COALESCE(MIN(r.entid), MIN(e.id)) AS id
FROM tbl_entries AS e
LEFT JOIN tbl_reviewlist AS r
ON r.entid = e.id
GROUP BY e.col1, e.col2, e.col3 ;
Tested at SQL-Fiddle