I have 3 tables in a SQLite database for an Android app. This picture below shows the relevant tables that I'm working with.
Tables
I'm trying to get two fields, value and name, from measurement_lines and competences respectively, tied to a specific person_id in measurements. I'm trying to make a query that returns these fields but I'm having little luck. The best I've got so far is the following query:
SELECT name, value
FROM measurements, measurement_lines, competences
WHERE measurements.id = measurement_lines.measurements_id
AND measurement_lines.competences_id = competences.id
AND measurements.persons_id = 1
This, however, has one issue. This query won't return any records when a person has no entries in measurements (and subsequently, nothing in measurement_lines). What I want is to always get a list of competence names, even if the value column is empty. I'm guessing I need a Left Outer Join for this but I can't seem to make it work. The following query just returns no records:
SELECT name, value
FROM measurements AS m, competences AS c
LEFT OUTER JOIN measurement_lines AS ml ON c._id = ml.competence_id
WHERE ml.measurement_id = m._id AND m.persons_id = 1
For inner joins, you can be sloppy with the distinction between join conditions and selection predicates, but when outer joins are involved that makes a difference. Any criterion appearing in the WHERE clause filters your result rows after all joins are performed (logically, at least), which can remove result rows associated with outer tables.
In addition, if you're ever uncertain about join order, you can use parentheses to make your intent clear. At least in many DBMSs. It lokos like SQLite doesn't support them.
It looks like you may want this: (edited to avoid use of parentheses)
SELECT c.name, pm.value
FROM competences c
LEFT OUTER JOIN (
SELECT ml.competences_id AS cid,
ml.value AS value
FROM measurement_lines ml
INNER JOIN measurements m
ON m.id = ml.measurements_id
WHERE m.person_id = 1
) pm
ON pm.cid = c.id
Related
I'm generating a table which will in turn be used to format several different statistics and graphs.
Some columns of this table, are a result of subqueries which use a nearly identical structure. My query works, but it is very inefficient even in a simplified example like the following one.
SELECT
o.order,
o.date,
c.clienttype,
o.producttype,
(SELECT date FROM orders_interactions LEFT JOIN categories WHERE order=o.order AND category=3) as completiondate,
(SELECT amount FROM orders_interactions LEFT JOIN categories WHERE order=o.order AND category=3) as amount,
DATEDIFF((select date from orders_interactions LEFT JOIN categories where order=o.order AND category=3),o.date) as elapseddays
FROM orders o
LEFT JOIN clients c ON c.idClient=o.idClient
Being this a simplified example of a much more complex query, I would like to know the recommended approaches for a query like this one, taking into account query times, and readability.
As the example shows, I had to repeat a subquery (the one with date), just to calculate a datediff, since I cannot directly reference the column 'completiondate'
Thank you
You can try a left join.
SELECT o.order,
o.date,
o.producttype,
oi.date completiondate,
oi.amount,
datediff(oi.date, o.date) completiondate
FROM orders o
LEFT JOIN orders_interactions oi
ON oi.order = o.order
AND oi.category = 3;
That doesn't necessarily perform better but there are good chances. For performance an index on order_interactions (order, category) might help in any case.
And if you consider it more readable is up to you. But at least it's less repetitive (Which doesn't necessarily translates to more performance. Just because an expression is repeated in a query doesn't necessarily mean it repeatedly calculated.)
It seems I might have found the answer.
In my opinion, it improves readability quite a bit, and in my real usage scenario, both profile and execution plans are way more efficient, and results are returned in less than 1/3 of the time.
My answer relies on using a SELECT inside the LEFT JOIN, hence, using a subquery as the JOINs 'input'.
SELECT
o.order,
o.date,
c.clienttype,
o.producttype,
tmp.date,
tmp.amount,
DATEDIFF(tmp.date,o.date) as elapseddays
FROM orders o
LEFT JOIN clients c ON c.idClient=o.idClient
LEFT JOIN (SELECT order,date,amount FROM orders_interactions oi LEFT JOIN categories ct ON ct.order=oi.order AND category=3) AS tmp ON tmp.order=o.order
The answer idea, and the explanation about how and why it works, came from this post: Mysql Reference subquery result in parent where clause
I have a table where rows appear to be "duplicates" but they are actually not (they have different date).
Suppose each record has a column A that is supposed to be unique. However due to this column A could or could not appear again later with updated information (with column A unchanged), it is no longer unique even when it should be.
Therefore I want the table with latest information only. Currently this table contains 500k entries, however the "true" number of unique entries is less than half of it.
I have tried
SELECT *
FROM TABLE
WHERE A = A
AND Date = (SELECT MAX(Date) from TABLE)
ORDER BY DATE
However this only returns 2 results. How do I achieve that?
The subquery on the date is the correct idea, but you must include the column A in the subquery and relate it back to the main table. I prefer to use explicit joins rather than embedding the subquery in the WHERE statement. This is usually more efficient anyway.
SELECT TABLE.*
FROM TABLE INNER JOIN
(SELECT A, MAX(Date) AS MaxDate FROM TABLE GROUP BY A) AS latest
ON TABLE.A = latest.A AND TABLE.date = latest.MaxDate
ORDER BY A, date
Or even better, I prefer CTE (Common Table Expression) syntax, since it makes the individual queries easier to read:
WITH latest AS (
SELECT A, MAX(Date) AS MaxDate
FROM TABLE
GROUP BY A
)
SELECT TABLE.*
FROM TABLE INNER JOIN latest
ON TABLE.A = latest.A AND TABLE.date = latest.MaxDate
ORDER BY TABLE.A, TABLE.date
Comparison to other answer
The answer by MikeT relies on a non-standard feature of sqlite. That is okay of itself as long as you are aware that the solution is not compatible with other databases engines/servers and SQL dialects.
The next possible gotcha really relies on your actual data and table schema (neither of which you shared in the question details). If your data allows multiple rows with the same date for the a single A column value, then the conditions in your question are not enough to definitively remove all duplicates. You would need to identify another column by which to resolve any remaining duplicates, but once again your question did not do that.
However, in testing, I found that my solution allows unresolved duplicates to remain in the results. MikeT's solution eliminate all duplicates, but it does so by arbitrarily excluding one of those duplicates. There are ways to fix either solution to definitely select which duplicate to keep, but I will not even attempt that unless you post actual data and the table schema so that my answer is not just mere guessing. I'm glad that my answer was useful thus far, but you need to understand your data better (than reveal in the question) to ensure what solution is actually best.
Bonus
Against my better judgement to just keep expanding on answers... since you should really research this separately... here's an example of how you would continue joining this with other queries...
WITH latest AS (
SELECT A, MAX(Date) AS MaxDate
FROM TABLE
GROUP BY A
),
firstResults AS (
SELECT TABLE.*
FROM TABLE INNER JOIN latest
ON TABLE.A = latest.A AND TABLE.date = latest.MaxDate
ORDER BY TABLE.A, TABLE.date
)
SELECT otherTable.*
FROM firstResults JOIN otherTable
ON firstResults.A = otherTable.A
WHERE somecondition = 'foobar'
Another approach if you're using a somewhat recent version of sqlite (3.25 or newer), using the row_number() window function to rank groups of the same a value by date and picking the first one:
WITH cte AS
(SELECT a, date, row_number() OVER (PARTITION BY a ORDER BY date DESC) AS rn
FROM yourtable)
SELECT a, date
FROM cte
WHERE rn = 1;
One important thing to note since I noticed you mentioning another answer was slow is that an index on mytable(a, date DESC) will be needed for this query for best results, and an index on mytable(a, date) will speed up the other answers given.
I believe, if I understand what you have written, that you could use :-
SELECT a,max(date), other FROM mytable GROUP BY a ORDER BY date;
note that the other column represents other columns (if present)
However, the other column will be an arbritary value (from one of the grouped columns) which may well be the required value (in the example it is).
As per :-
Each expression in the result-set is then evaluated once for each
group of rows. If the expression is an aggregate expression, it is
evaluated across all rows in the group. Otherwise, it is evaluated
against a single arbitrarily chosen row from within the group. If
there is more than one non-aggregate expression in the result-set,
then all such expressions are evaluated for the same row.
SQL As Understood By SQLite - SELECT
More correctly, to eliminate an arbritary value(sic) for the other column, you could use :-
SELECT
a /* will always be the same and isn't arbritary */,
max(date) /* will be the maximum data */ AS date,
(SELECT other FROM mytable WHERE a = m.a AND date = m.date) AS other
FROM mytable AS m /* AS m allows the outer query to be distinguished from the inner query */
GROUP BY a /* this effectivel removes duplicates on the a column */
ORDER BY date
;
The example below appears to produce the same result.
Example :-
Using the following to populate the table with some generated testing data :-
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS mytable (a TEXT, date TEXT, other);
WITH cte(count,a,date,other) AS
(
SELECT 1,1,date('now','+'||(random() % 30)||' days'),'other1'
UNION ALL SELECT count+1,abs(random()) % 20,date('now','+'||(abs(random()) % 30)||' days'), 'other'||(count+1) FROM cte LIMIT 100
INSERT INTO mytable (a,date,other) SELECT a,date,other FROM cte
;
SELECT * FROM mytable ORDER BY DATE DESC;
in this case :-
Highlighted rows being those required to be extracted.
Then after the above has been run the following is run
SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE a = a AND date = (SELECT MAX(date) FROM mytable);
SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE /*a = a AND*/ date = (SELECT MAX(date) FROM mytable);
/* Will only select 1 row per unique value of a BUT other will be an arbritary value not necessairlly the latest */
SELECT a,max(date), other FROM mytable GROUP BY a /* group by effectively display unique */;
SELECT
a /* will always be the same and isn't arbritary */,
max(date) /* will be the maximum data */ AS date,
(SELECT other FROM mytable WHERE a = m.a AND date = m.date) AS other
FROM mytable AS m
GROUP BY a
;
The first two results show that a = a does nothing as it will always be true.
The thrid query produces (unordered) :-
Note ticks assigned by checking the value of other from the previous result.
In this case this shorter query works OK even though values of other are arbritary values (they aren't really as it depends upon how the query planner plasn the query).
The fourth, the more correct, produces the same results :-
Result 2 (your orignal query) and 3 (original without a = a) produce :-
and :-
I have this sqlite database:
And I need to get the set from AssignmentMetric for a certain Athlete_id AND for Assignments which include a skill with Value X.
I've looked all over JOIN, LEFT JOIN but cannot find any examples that seems to match exactly this. I can query to get Assignment metrics for a particular Athlete ID And Assignment ID, but I am trying to narrow the Assignments to ones that are for a specific skill "of X value". How do I "reach through" the Assignment table to grab the value from the Skill table?
You could do:
SELECT ...
FROM
AssignmentMetric
INNER JOIN Assignment
ON AssignmentMetric.Assignment_id =
Assignment.Assignment_id
INNER JOIN
Skill
ON Skill.Skill_id = Assignment.Skill_id
WHERE ...
In the WHERE you can refer to the colums of the tables using the tablename.columnname notation.
I have the following code and for some reason the left outer join is not producing the correct results.
Dim StudentCourseList = From stud in students
Group Join cour in courses
on stud.id equals cour.id into joinedlist = Group
From j in joinedlist.defaultifempty
select stud
The count before the left outer join of students is 12 and courses is 4. However, after the join, the student count is 14 due to some reason. It should be 12 if not less than 12. Am I doing something wrong here?
Edit - The query is fine. The problems in with the courses list. It has repeating/duplicate items in it. The question now would be how to get the distinct results?
You have not posted your table data. So this is just an assumption.
Why count is 14?
If one student have more than one course for example having two course than it would result in two records.
Use group by and then select first like below query.
var query = from person in people
join pet in pets on person.Id equals pet.OwnerId into gj
from subpet in gj.DefaultIfEmpty()
group person by person.Id into temp1
select temp1.First();
here is working fiddle. sorry I am not a vb guy so posted answer in c#.
I have two tables, one contains a list of items which is called watch_list with some important attributes and the other is just a list of prices which is called price_history. What I would like to do is group together 10 of the lowest prices into a single column with a group_concat operation and then create a row with item attributes from watch_list along with the 10 lowest prices for each item in watch_list. First I tried joins but then I realized that the operations where happening in the wrong order so there was no way I could get the desired result with a join operation. Then I tried the obvious thing and just queried the price_history for every row in the watch_list and just glued everything together in the host environment which worked but seemed very inefficient. Now I have the following query which looks like it should work but it's not giving me the results that I want. I would like to know what is wrong with the following statement:
select w.asin,w.title,
(select group_concat(lowest_used_price) from price_history as p
where p.asin=w.asin limit 10)
as lowest_used
from watch_list as w
Basically I want the limit operation to happen before group_concat does anything but I can't think of a sql statement that will do that.
Figured it out, as somebody once said "All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection." and in this case an extra select subquery did the trick:
select w.asin,w.title,
(select group_concat(lowest_used_price)
from (select lowest_used_price from price_history as p
where p.asin=w.asin limit 10)) as lowest_used
from watch_list as w