I want to have a query that returns the best results from a table.
I am defining the best results to be the addition of two columns a + b (each column holds an int)
ie:
entry a b
1 4 5
2 3 2
3 20 30
Entry 3 would be returned because a + b is the highest in this case.
Is there a way to do this? One idea I had was to create another column in the table which holds the addition of a and b and then ORDER by DESC, but that seems a little bit messy.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
SELECT *
FROM mytable
ORDER BY
a + b DESC
LIMIT 1
Adding another column, however, would be a good option, since you could index this column which would improve the query.
Related
SELECT column_1 FROM table_1,table_2;
When I ran this on my database it returned huge number of rows with duplicate column_1 values. I could not understand why I got these results. Please explain what this query does.
it gives you a cross product from table 1 and table 2
In more layman's terms, it means that for each record in Table A, you get every record from Table B (all possible combinations).
TableA with 3 records and Table B with 3 records gives 9 total records in the result:
TableA-1/B-1
TableA-1/B-2
TableA-1/B-3
TableA-2/B-1
TableA-2/B-2
TableA-2/B-3
TableA-3/B-1
TableA-3/B-2
TableA-3/B-3
Often used as a basis for Cartesian Queries (which themselves are the means to generate, say, a list of future dates based on a recurrence schedule: give me all possible results for the next 6 months, then restrict that set to those whose factor matches my day of the week)
This is 'valid' way of cross joining two tables; it is not the preferred way though. Cross Join would be much clearer. An on condition would then be helpful to limit results,
Imagine that i have 3 friends named Jhon, Ana, Nick; then i have in the other table 2 are T-shirts a red and a yellow and i wanna know witch is from.
So in the query being tableA:Friends and tableB:Tshirts returns:
1|JHON | t-shirt_YELLOW
2|JHON | t-shirt_RED
3|ANA | t-shirt_YELLOW
4|ANA | t-shirt_RED
5|NICK | t-shirt_YELLOW
6|NICK | t-shirt_RED
As you see this join has no relational logic between friends and Tshirts so by evaluating all the posible combination generates what you call duplicates.
i have table lets say - Students,
with 5 records and id(s) are 1 to 5, now i want to select the records - in a way that result should come like given sorting order of id column
id column should be resulted - 5,2,1,3,4
is there any other way to do this - then separate db calls for ids?
single db call ?
I guess if you really want a hard-coded order, you could do something like this:
order by case id
when 5 then 0
when 2 then 1
when 1 then 2
when 3 then 3
when 4 then 4
else 999
end
Or more simply (as #Strawberry points out in the comments):
order BY FIELD(id,4,3,1,2,5) desc
Is it possible to sort in MySQL by "order by" using a predefined set of column values (ID) like order by (ID=1,5,4,3) so I would get records 1, 5, 4, 3 in that order out?
UPDATE: Why I need this...
I want my records to change sort randomly every 5 minutes. I have a cron task to update the table to put different, random sort order in it.
There is just one problem! PAGINATION.
I will have visitors who come to my page, and I will give them the first 20 results. They will wait 6 minutes, go to page 2 and have the wrong results as the sort order has already changed.
So I thought that if I put all the IDs into a session on page 2, we get the correct records even if the sorting had already changed.
Is there any other better way to do this?
You can use ORDER BY and FIELD function.
See http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/209784
SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY FIELD(ID,1,5,4,3)
It uses Field() function, Which "Returns the index (position) of str in the str1, str2, str3, ... list. Returns 0 if str is not found" according to the documentation. So actually you sort the result set by the return value of this function which is the index of the field value in the given set.
You should be able to use CASE for this:
ORDER BY CASE id
WHEN 1 THEN 1
WHEN 5 THEN 2
WHEN 4 THEN 3
WHEN 3 THEN 4
ELSE 5
END
On the official documentation for mysql about ORDER BY, someone has posted that you can use FIELD for this matter, like this:
SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY FIELD(id,1,5,4,3)
This is untested code that in theory should work.
SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY id='8' DESC, id='5' DESC, id='4' DESC, id='3' DESC
If I had 10 registries for example, this way the ID 1, 5, 4 and 3 will appears first, the others registries will appears next.
Normal exibition
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
With this way
8
5
4
3
1
2
6
7
9
10
There's another way to solve this. Add a separate table, something like this:
CREATE TABLE `new_order` (
`my_order` BIGINT(20) UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
`my_number` BIGINT(20) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`my_order`),
UNIQUE KEY `my_number` (`my_number`)
) ENGINE=INNODB;
This table will now be used to define your own order mechanism.
Add your values in there:
my_order | my_number
---------+----------
1 | 1
2 | 5
3 | 4
4 | 3
...and then modify your SQL statement while joining this new table.
SELECT *
FROM your_table AS T1
INNER JOIN new_order AS T2 on T1.id = T2.my_number
WHERE ....whatever...
ORDER BY T2.my_order;
This solution is slightly more complex than other solutions, but using this you don't have to change your SELECT-statement whenever your order criteriums change - just change the data in the order table.
If you need to order a single id first in the result, use the id.
select id,name
from products
order by case when id=5 then -1 else id end
If you need to start with a sequence of multiple ids, specify a collection, similar to what you would use with an IN statement.
select id,name
from products
order by case when id in (30,20,10) then -1 else id end,id
If you want to order a single id last in the result, use the order by the case. (Eg: you want "other" option in last and all city list show in alphabetical order.)
select id,city
from city
order by case
when id = 2 then city else -1
end, city ASC
If i had 5 city for example, i want to show the city in alphabetical order with "other" option display last in the dropdown then we can use this query.
see example other are showing in my table at second id(id:2) so i am using "when id = 2" in above query.
record in DB table:
Bangalore - id:1
Other - id:2
Mumbai - id:3
Pune - id:4
Ambala - id:5
my output:
Ambala
Bangalore
Mumbai
Pune
Other
SELECT * FROM TABLE ORDER BY (columnname,1,2) ASC OR DESC
I have a table and I would like to get a row containing all the latest non-null attributes for each column (without combining separate queries for each column, which doesn't seem elegant to me).
Example:
A B C Time
1 a 7 0
NULL NULL 3 1
3 NULL 4 2
NULL NULL 6 3
Result I seek:
A B C
3 a 6
As I said, I know how to select what I want for each column separately, but I was wondering if there's a better way to do it. No need to tax the poor database if it isn't needed.
Probably a better way than this, but it's Monday and I'm not quite conscious yet:
select #a:=null, #b:=null, #c:=null;
select A,B,C from (
select #a:=coalesce(A,#a) as A, #b:=coalesce(B,#b) as B, #c:=coalesce(C,#) as C time
from yourtable
order by time asc
) as y order by time desc limit 1;
Basically, iterate over each row in the database and build up the "latest" value as you go, then reverse the result set and select only the one with the highest time value
Is it possible to do a SELECT statement with a predetermined order, ie. selecting IDs 7,2,5,9 and 8 and returning them in that order, based on nothing more than the ID field?
Both these statements return them in the same order:
SELECT id FROM table WHERE id in (7,2,5,9,8)
SELECT id FROM table WHERE id in (8,2,5,9,7)
I didn't think this was possible, but found a blog entry here that seems to do the type of thing you're after:
SELECT id FROM table WHERE id in (7,2,5,9,8)
ORDER BY FIND_IN_SET(id,"7,2,5,9,8");
will give different results to
SELECT id FROM table WHERE id in (7,2,5,9,8)
ORDER BY FIND_IN_SET(id,"8,2,5,9,7");
FIND_IN_SET returns the position of id in the second argument given to it, so for the first case above, id of 7 is at position 1 in the set, 2 at 2 and so on - mysql internally works out something like
id | FIND_IN_SET
---|-----------
7 | 1
2 | 2
5 | 3
then orders by the results of FIND_IN_SET.
Your best bet is:
ORDER BY FIELD(ID,7,2,4,5,8)
...but it's still ugly.
Could you include a case expression that maps your IDs 7,2,5,... to the ordinals 1,2,3,... and then order by that expression?
All ordering is done by the ORDER BY keywords, you can only however sort ascending and descending. If you are using a language such as PHP you can then sort them accordingly using some code but I do not believe it is possible with MySQL alone.
This works in Oracle. Can you do something similar in MySql?
SELECT ID_FIELD
FROM SOME_TABLE
WHERE ID_FIELD IN(11,10,14,12,13)
ORDER BY
CASE WHEN ID_FIELD = 11 THEN 0
WHEN ID_FIELD = 10 THEN 1
WHEN ID_FIELD = 14 THEN 2
WHEN ID_FIELD = 12 THEN 3
WHEN ID_FIELD = 13 THEN 4
END
You may need to create a temp table with an autonumber field and insert into it in the desired order. Then sort on the new autonumber field.
Erm, not really. Closest you can get is probably:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE id IN (3, 2, 1, 4) ORDER BY id=4, id=1, id=2, id=3
But you probably don't want that :)
It's hard to give you any more specific advice without more information about what's in the tables.
It's hacky (and probably slow), but you can get the effect with UNION ALL:
SELECT id FROM table WHERE id = 7
UNION ALL SELECT id FROM table WHERE id = 2
UNION ALL SELECT id FROM table WHERE id = 5
UNION ALL SELECT id FROM table WHERE id = 9
UNION ALL SELECT id FROM table WHERE id = 8;
Edit: Other people mentioned the find_in_set function which is documented here.
You get answers fast around here, don't you…
The reason I'm asking this is that it's the only way I can think of to avoid sorting a complex multidimensional array. I'm not saying it would be difficult to sort, but if there were a simpler way to do it with straight sql, then why not.
One Oracle solution is:
SELECT id FROM table WHERE id in (7,2,5,9,8)
ORDER BY DECODE(id,7,1,2,2,5,3,9,4,8,5,6);
This assigns an order number to each ID. Works OK for a small set of values.
Best I can think of is adding a second Column orderColumn:
7 1
2 2
5 3
9 4
8 5
And then just do a ORDER BY orderColumn