I need to delete rows from an SQLite table where their row IDs do not exist in another table. The SELECT statement returns the correct rows:
SELECT * FROM cache LEFT JOIN main ON cache.id=main.id WHERE main.id IS NULL;
However, the delete statement generates an error from SQLIte:
DELETE FROM cache LEFT JOIN main ON cache.id=main.id WHERE main.id IS NULL;
The error is: SQLite Error 1 - near "left": syntax error. Is there another syntax I could use?
SQLite apparently doesn't support joins with the delete statement, as you can see on the Syntax diagrams. You should however be able to use a subquery to delete them.
ie.
DELETE FROM cache WHERE id IN
(SELECT cache.id FROM cache LEFT JOIN main ON cache.id=main.id WHERE main.id IS NULL);
(Not tested)
Since you going down the route of subquery, might as well get rid of the join altogether and simplify the query:
DELETE FROM cache WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT id from main);
Solution from #wimvds didn't work for me, so I modified the query and removed WHERE condition:
DELETE FROM FirstTable WHERE firstTableId NOT IN (SELECT SecondTable.firstTableId FROM SecondTable LEFT JOIN FirstTable ON FirstTable.firstTableId=SecondTable.firstTableId)
This deletes all the rows from FirstTable that do not have their id assigned to any row in SecondTable.
Related
I have a query like this (simplified and anonymised):
SELECT
Department.id,
Department.name,
Department.manager_id,
Employee.name AS manager_name
FROM
Department
LEFT OUTER JOIN Employee
ON Department.manager_id = Employee.id;
The field Department.manager_id may be NULL. If it is non-NULL then it is guaranteed to be a valid id for precisely one row in the Employee table, so the OUTER JOIN is there just for the rows in the Department table where it is NULL.
Here is the problem: old instances of the database do not have this Department.manager_id column at all. In those cases, I would like the query to act as if the field did exist but was always NULL, so e.g. the manager_name field is returned as NULL. If the query only used the Department table then I could just use SELECT * and check for the column in my application, but the JOIN seems to make this impossible. I would prefer not to modify the database, partly so that I can load the database in read only mode. Can this be done just by clever adjustment of the query?
For completeness, here is an answer that does not require munging both possible schemas into one query (but still doesn't need you to actually do the schema migration):
Check for the schema version, and use that to determine which SELECT query to issue (i.e. with or without the manager_id column and JOIN) as a separate step. Here are a few possibilities to determine the schema version:
The ideal situation is that you already keep track of the schema by assigning version numbers to the schema and recording them in the database. Commonly this is done with either:
The user_version pragma.
A table called "Schema" or similar with one row containing the schema version number.
You can directly determine whether the column is present in the table. Two possibilities:
Use the table_info pragma to determine the list of columns in the table.
Use a simple SELECT * FROM Table LIMIT 1 and look at what columns are returned (this is probably better as it is independent of the database engine).
This seems to work:
SELECT
Dept.id,
Dept.name,
Dept.manager_id,
Employee.name AS manager_name
FROM
(SELECT *, NULL AS manager_id FROM Department) AS Dept
LEFT OUTER JOIN Employee
ON Dept.manager_id = Employee.id;
If the manager_id column is present in Department then it is used for the join, whereas if it is not then Dept.manager_id and Employee.name are both NULL.
If I swap the column order in the subquery:
(SELECT NULL AS manager_id, * FROM Department) AS Dept
then the Dept.manager_id and Employee.name are both NULL even if the Department.manager_id column exists, so it seems that Dept.manager_id refers to the first column in the Dept subquery that has that name. It would be good to find a reference in the SQLite documentation saying that this behaviour is guaranteed (or explicitly saying that it is not), but I can't find anything (e.g. in the SELECT or expression pages).
I haven't tried this with other database systems so I don't know if it will work with anything other than SQLite.
I'm working on a sqlite database and try to make a special request between two tables.
In the first table (table1 for example), i have two columns named "reference" and "ID". I want to search an ID in it, get it value in "reference" and display all informations from the table which have this value as name.
I try to find something on the internet but I didn't find an answer.
This is the request I made:
select * from (select Reference from table1 where Name='Value1')
It only give me the result of
select Reference from table1 where Name='Value1'
EDIT:
I want
select Reference from table1 where Name='Value1' => name of table
select * from name of table => show all elements
I'm new in sqlite but I hope you can help me.
Thank you by advance
Matt
If I understand your question correctly, I don't think there's a way to do it in sql completely (or at least not in a portable way). I'd recommend one of 3 solutions:
Do exactly what you want, but do some processing in Python. That means query your master table, then construct new query based on each of the rows returned.
If you have many tables, possibly changing dynamically - it may be a good idea to rethink your database design. Maybe you can move some of the changing table names into a new column and put your data in one table?
If you have only a few tables available as the Reference and they never change, you could join all the possible tables, like:
SELECT ... FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.id = table2.id AND table1.Reference = "table2"
LEFT JOIN table3 ...
But you may need to explain it all a bit better...
How do you delete a row from two separate tables? I thought it would be possible to do this using an inner join
DELETE a.*, b.* FROM Holiday INNER JOIN Accommodation b on a.LocationID = b.LocationID
Here i try to delete by matching the primary key location in the first table to the location id in the second table. I get an SQL Exception "sqlException near a"
Im doing this in SQLITE, java
In SQLite, one DELETE command deletes from only one table.
Your query, as written, doesn't actually restrict the records to be deleted, so if you really want to delete all records, you would use this:
DELETE FROM Holiday;
DELETE FROM Accommodation;
If you want to delete one record in the master table and all corresponding records in the child table, you just filter by that key value:
DELETE FROM Holiday WHERE LocationID = 1;
DELETE FROM Accommodation WHERE LocationID = 1;
If I have this statement,
SELECT table1.*, table2_1.`values` AS val_1
FROM table1 JOIN table2_1
ON table1.row_names=table2_1.row_names
I would actually like this the result joined back into table1. Any inclusion of a join statement after SELECT and before FROM gives me an error.
Why can I not save the results to a table, and is it possible to save it back to one of the original tables?
Because you do it the wrong way. SELECT statement will not modify you data no matter how much you want it. If you want to modify data, you need to use UPDATE statement.
I want to get the number of selected rows as well as the selected data. At the present I have to use two sql statements:
one is
select * from XXX where XXX;
the other is
select count(*) from XXX where XXX;
Can it be realised with a single sql string?
I've checked the source code of sqlite3, and I found the function of sqlite3_changes(). But the function is only useful when the database is changed (after insert, delete or update).
Can anyone help me with this problem? Thank you very much!
SQL can't mix single-row (counting) and multi-row results (selecting data from your tables). This is a common problem with returning huge amounts of data. Here are some tips how to handle this:
Read the first N rows and tell the user "more than N rows available". Not very precise but often good enough. If you keep the cursor open, you can fetch more data when the user hits the bottom of the view (Google Reader does this)
Instead of selecting the data directly, first copy it into a temporary table. The INSERT statement will return the number of rows copied. Later, you can use the data in the temporary table to display the data. You can add a "row number" to this temporary table to make paging more simple.
Fetch the data in a background thread. This allows the user to use your application while the data grid or table fills with more data.
try this way
select (select count() from XXX) as count, *
from XXX;
select (select COUNT(0)
from xxx t1
where t1.b <= t2.b
) as 'Row Number', b from xxx t2 ORDER BY b;
just try this.
You could combine them into a single statement:
select count(*), * from XXX where XXX
or
select count(*) as MYCOUNT, * from XXX where XXX
To get the number of unique titles, you need to pass the DISTINCT clause to the COUNT function as the following statement:
SELECT
COUNT(DISTINCT column_name)
FROM
'table_name';
Source: http://www.sqlitetutorial.net/sqlite-count-function/
For those who are still looking for another method, the more elegant one I found to get the total of row was to use a CTE.
this ensure that the count is only calculated once :
WITH cnt(total) as (SELECT COUNT(*) from xxx) select * from xxx,cnt
the only drawback is if a WHERE clause is needed, it should be applied in both main query and CTE query.
In the first comment, Alttag said that there is no issue to run 2 queries. I don't agree with that unless both are part of a unique transaction. If not, the source table can be altered between the 2 queries by any INSERT or DELETE from another thread/process. In such case, the count value might be wrong.
Once you already have the select * from XXX results, you can just find the array length in your program right?
If you use sqlite3_get_table instead of prepare/step/finalize you will get all the results at once in an array ("result table"), including the numbers and names of columns, and the number of rows. Then you should free the result with sqlite3_free_table
int rows_count = 0;
while (sqlite3_step(stmt) == SQLITE_ROW)
{
rows_count++;
}
// The rows_count is available for use
sqlite3_reset(stmt); // reset the stmt for use it again
while (sqlite3_step(stmt) == SQLITE_ROW)
{
// your code in the query result
}