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
Related
This is a simple question about efficiency specifically related to the MySQL implementation. I want to just check if a table is empty (and if it is empty, populate it with the default data). Would it be best to use a statement like SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `table` and then compare to 0, or would it be better to do a statement like SELECT `id` FROM `table` LIMIT 0,1 then check if any results were returned (the result set has next)?
Although I need this for a project I am working on, I am also interested in how MySQL works with those two statements and whether the reason people seem to suggest using COUNT(*) is because the result is cached or whether it actually goes through every row and adds to a count as it would intuitively seem to me.
You should definitely go with the second query rather than the first.
When using COUNT(*), MySQL is scanning at least an index and counting the records. Even if you would wrap the call in a LEAST() (SELECT LEAST(COUNT(*), 1) FROM table;) or an IF(), MySQL will fully evaluate COUNT() before evaluating further. I don't believe MySQL caches the COUNT(*) result when InnoDB is being used.
Your second query results in only one row being read, furthermore an index is used (assuming id is part of one). Look at the documentation of your driver to find out how to check whether any rows have been returned.
By the way, the id field may be omitted from the query (MySQL will use an arbitrary index):
SELECT 1 FROM table LIMIT 1;
However, I think the simplest and most performant solution is the following (as indicated in Gordon's answer):
SELECT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM table);
EXISTS returns 1 if the subquery returns any rows, otherwise 0. Because of this semantic MySQL can optimize the execution properly.
Any fields listed in the subquery are ignored, thus 1 or * is commonly written.
See the MySQL Manual for more info on the EXISTS keyword and its use.
It is better to do the second method or just exists. Specifically, something like:
if exists (select id from table)
should be the fastest way to do what you want. You don't need the limit; the SQL engine takes care of that for you.
By the way, never put identifiers (table and column names) in single quotes.
I sort the rows on date. If I want to select every row that has a unique value in the last column, can I do this with sql?
So I would like to select the first row, second one, third one not, fourth one I do want to select, and so on.
What you want are not unique rows, but rather one per group. This can be done by taking the MIN(pk_artikel_Id) and GROUP BY fk_artikel_bron. This method uses an IN subquery to get the first pk_artikel_id and its associated fk_artikel_bron for each unique fk_artikel_bron and then uses that to get the remaining columns in the outer query.
SELECT * FROM tbl
WHERE pk_artikel_id IN
(SELECT MIN(pk_artikel_id) AS id FROM tbl GROUP BY fk_artikel_bron)
Although MySQL would permit you to add the rest of the columns in the SELECT list initially, avoiding the IN subquery, that isn't really portable to other RDBMS systems. This method is a little more generic.
It can also be done with a JOIN against the subquery, which may or may not be faster. Hard to say without benchmarking it.
SELECT *
FROM tbl
JOIN (
SELECT
fk_artikel_bron,
MIN(pk_artikel_id) AS id
FROM tbl
GROUP BY fk_artikel_bron) mins ON tbl.pk_artikel_id = mins.id
This is similar to Michael's answer, but does it with a self-join instead of a subquery. Try it out to see how it performs:
SELECT * from tbl t1
LEFT JOIN tbl t2
ON t2.fk_artikel_bron = t1.fk_artikel_bron
AND t2.pk_artikel_id < t1.pk_artikel_id
WHERE t2.pk_artikel_id IS NULL
If you have the right indexes, this type of join often out performs subqueries (since derived tables don't use indexes).
This non-standard, mysql-only trick will select the first row encountered for each value of pk_artikel_bron.
select *
...
group by pk_artikel_bron
Like it or not, this query produces the output asked for.
Edited
I seem to be getting hammered here, so here's the disclaimer:
This only works for mysql 5+
Although the mysql specification says the row returned using this technique is not predictable (ie you could get any row as the "first" encountered), in fact in all cases I've ever seen, you'll get the first row as per the order selected, so to get a predictable row that works in practice (but may not work in future releases but probably will), select from an ordered result:
select * from (
select *
...
order by pk_artikel_id) x
group by pk_artikel_bron
I'm trying to find the most efficient way to determine if a table row exists.
I have in mind 3 options:
SELECT EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM table1 WHERE some_condition);
SELECT 1 FROM table1 WHERE some_condition LIMIT 0,1;
SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table1 WHERE some_condition;
It seems that for MySQL the first approach is more efficient:
Best way to test if a row exists in a MySQL table
Is it true in general for any database?
UPDATE:
I've added a third option.
UPDATE2:
Let's assume the database products are mysql, oracle and sql-server.
I would do
SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table 1 WHERE some_condition.
But I don't think it makes a significant difference unless you call it a lot (in which case, I'd probably use a different strategy).
If you mean to use as a test if AT LEAST ONE row exists with some condition (1 or 0, true or false), then:
select count(1) from my_table where ... and rownum < 2;
Oracle can stop counting after it gets a hit.
Exists is faster because it will return the number of results that match the subquery and not the whole result.
The different methods have different pros and cons:
SELECT EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM table1 WHERE some_condition);
might be the fastest on MySQL, but
SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table 1 WHERE some_condition
as in #Luis answer gives you the count.
More to the point I recommend you take a look at your business logic: Very seldom is it necessary to just see if a row exists, more often you will want to
either use these rows, so just do the select and handle the 0-rows case
or you will want to change these rows, in which case just do your update and check mysql_affected_rows()
If you want to INSERT a row if it doesn't already exist, take a look at INSERT .. ON DUPLICATE KEY or REPLACE INTO
The exists function is defined generally in SQL, it isn't only as a MySQL function : http://www.techonthenet.com/sql/exists.php
and I usually use this function to test if a particular row exists.
However in Oracle I've seen many times the other approach suggested before:
SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table 1 WHERE some_condition.
I just read this article:
http://use-the-index-luke.com/sql/clustering/index-only-scan-covering-index
And at the bottom is this statement:
Queries that do not select any table columns are often executed as index-only scan.
Can you think of a meaningful example?
Problem is, there is no comments section, so I just want to verify, this is one example, correct?
SELECT 1 FROM `table_name` WHERE `indexed_column` = ?
This is to check whether a specified row exists.
So the questions:
Are there any more practical uses for that?
As a side note, I read somewhere that the above query might be more performant if encapsulated in EXISTS, I'm not sure how to check if it's true:
SELECT EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM `table_name` WHERE `indexed_column` = ? LIMIT 1)
Is it?
Well, possibly the canonical example would be select count(*) from mytable to get a row count.
That selects no data from the table and would most likely be satisfied by the primary key index, if available.
This is going to be one of those questions but I need to ask it.
I have a large table which may or may not have one unique row. I therefore need a MySQL query that will just tell me TRUE or FALSE.
With my current knowledge, I see two options (pseudo code):
[id = primary key]
OPTION 1:
SELECT id FROM table WHERE x=1 LIMIT 1
... and then determine in PHP whether a result was returned.
OPTION 2:
SELECT COUNT(id) FROM table WHERE x=1
... and then just use the count.
Is either of these preferable for any reason, or is there perhaps an even better solution?
Thanks.
If the selection criterion is truly unique (i.e. yields at most one result), you are going to see massive performance improvement by having an index on the column (or columns) involved in that criterion.
create index my_unique_index on table(x)
If you want to enforce the uniqueness, that is not even an option, you must have
create unique index my_unique_index on table(x)
Having this index, querying on the unique criterion will perform very well, regardless of minor SQL tweaks like count(*), count(id), count(x), limit 1 and so on.
For clarity, I would write
select count(*) from table where x = ?
I would avoid LIMIT 1 for two other reasons:
It is non-standard SQL. I am not religious about that, use the MySQL-specific stuff where necessary (i.e. for paging data), but it is not necessary here.
If for some reason, you have more than one row of data, that is probably a serious bug in your application. With LIMIT 1, you are never going to see the problem. This is like counting dinosaurs in Jurassic Park with the assumption that the number can only possibly go down.
AFAIK, if you have an index on your ID column both queries will be more or less equal performance. The second query will need 1 less line of code in your program but that's not going to make any performance impact either.
Personally I typically do the first one of selecting the id from the row and limiting to 1 row. I like this better from a coding perspective. Instead of having to actually retrieve the data, I just check the number of rows returned.
If I were to compare speeds, I would say not doing a count in MySQL would be faster. I don't have any proof, but my guess would be that MySQL has to get all of the rows and then count how many there are. Altough...on second thought, it would have to do that in the first option as well so the code will know how many rows there are as well. But since you have COUNT(id) vs COUNT(*), I would say it might be slightly slower.
Intuitively, the first one could be faster since it can abort the table(or index) scan when finds the first value. But you should retrieve x not id, since if the engine it's using an index on x, it doesn't need to go to the block where the row actually is.
Another option could be:
select exists(select 1 from mytable where x = ?) from dual
Which already returns a boolean.
Typically, you use group by having clause do determine if there are duplicate rows in a table. If you have a table with id and a name. (Assuming id is the primary key, and you want to know if name is unique or repeated). You would use
select name, count(*) as total from mytable group by name having total > 1;
The above will return the number of names which are repeated and the number of times.
If you just want one query to get your answer as true or false, you can use a nested query, e.g.
select if(count(*) >= 1, True, False) from (select name, count(*) as total from mytable group by name having total > 1) a;
The above should return true, if your table has duplicate rows, otherwise false.