Freebase; select a random record? - freebase

1) Is there any way to select a random record from Freebase? If I do a limit of 1, it consistently returns the same record. I could grab the larger data set and select a random rec from that but that seems like overkill. Analogous to MySQL's :
select * from profiles order by rand() limit 1;
2) Is there any way to tell Freebase not to select certain items in a set?
Analogous to MySQL's :
select * from profiles where id NOT IN (SELECT profile_id from approved_profiles)
Thanks in advance

Sorry, right now MQL doesn't have a random operator. This thread on the Freebase discussion list suggests using a random as_of_time parameter as a work-around.

Related

Cosmos db Order by on 'computed field'

I am trying to select data based on a status which is a string. What I want is that status 'draft' comes first, so I tried this:
SELECT *
FROM c
ORDER BY c.status = "draft" ? 0:1
I get an error:
Unsupported ORDER BY clause. ORDER BY item expression could not be mapped to a document path
I checked Microsoft site and I see this:
The ORDER BY clause requires that the indexing policy include an index for the fields being sorted. The Azure Cosmos DB query runtime supports sorting against a property name and not against computed properties.
Which I guess makes what I want to do impossible with queries... How could I achieve this? Using a stored procedure?
Edit:
About stored procedure: actually, I am just thinking about this, that would mean, I need to retrieve all data before ordering, that would be bad as I take max 100 value from my database... IS there any way I can do it so I don t have to retrieve all data first? Thanks
Thanks!
ORDER BY item expression could not be mapped to a document path.
Basically, we are told we can only sort with properties of document, not derived values. c.status = "draft" ? 0:1 is derived value.
My idea:
Two parts of query sql: The first one select c.* from c where c.status ='draft',second one select c.* from c where c.status <> 'draft' order by c.status. Finally, combine them.
Or you could try to use stored procedure you mentioned in your question to process the data from the result of select * from c order by c.status. Put draft data in front of others by if-else condition.

Sqlite Query Optimization (using Limit and Offset)

Following is the query that I use for getting a fixed number of records from a database with millions of records:-
select * from myTable LIMIT 100 OFFSET 0
What I observed is, if the offset is very high like say 90000, then it takes more time for the query to execute. Following is the time difference between 2 queries with different offsets:
select * from myTable LIMIT 100 OFFSET 0 //Execution Time is less than 1sec
select * from myTable LIMIT 100 OFFSET 95000 //Execution Time is almost 15secs
Can anyone suggest me how to optimize this query? I mean, the Query Execution Time should be same and fast for any number of records I wish to retrieve from any OFFSET.
Newly Added:-
The actual scenario is that I have got a database having > than 1 million records. But since it's an embedded device, I just can't do "select * from myTable" and then fetch all the records from the query. My device crashes. Instead what I do is I keep fetching records batch by batch (batch size = 100 or 1000 records) as per the query mentioned above. But as i mentioned, it becomes slow as the offset increases. So, my ultimate aim is that I want to read all the records from the database. But since I can't fetch all the records in a single execution, I need some other efficient way to achieve this.
As JvdBerg said, indexes are not used in LIMIT/OFFSET.
Simply adding 'ORDER BY indexed_field' will not help too.
To speed up pagination you should avoid LIMIT/OFFSET and use WHERE clause instead. For example, if your primary key field is named 'id' and has no gaps, than your code above can be rewritten like this:
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE id>=0 AND id<100 //very fast!
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE id>=95000 AND id<95100 //as fast as previous line!
By doing a query with a offset of 95000, all previous 95000 records are processed. You should make some index on the table, and use that for selecting records.
As #user318750 said, if you know you have a contiguous index, you can simply use
select * from Table where index >= %start and index < %(start+size)
However, those cases are rare. If you don't want to rely on that assumption, use a sub-query, for example using rowid, which is always indexed,
select * from Table where rowid in (
select rowid from Table limit %size offset %start)
This speeds things up especially if you have "fat" rows (e.g. that contain blobs).
If maintaining the record order is important (it usually isn't), you need to order the indices first:
select * from Table where rowid in (
select rowid from Table order by rowid limit %size offset %start)
select * from data where rowid = (select rowid from data limit 1 offset 999999);
With SQLite, you don't need to get all rows returned at once in a big fat array, you can get called back for every row. This way, you can process the results as they come in, which should address both your crashing and performance issues.
I guess you're not using C as you would already be using a callback, but this technique should be available in any other language.
Javascript example (from : https://www.npmjs.com/package/sqlite3 )
db.each("SELECT rowid AS id, info FROM lorem", function(err, row) {
console.log(row.id + ": " + row.info);
});

Hierarchical Database Select / Insert Statement (SQL Server)

I have recently stumbled upon a problem with selecting relationship details from a 1 table and inserting into another table, i hope someone can help.
I have a table structure as follows:
ID (PK) Name ParentID<br>
1 Myname 0<br>
2 nametwo 1<br>
3 namethree 2
e.g
This is the table i need to select from and get all the relationship data. As there could be unlimited number of sub links (is there a function i can create for this to create the loop ?)
Then once i have all the data i need to insert into another table and the ID's will now have to change as the id's must go in order (e.g. i cannot have id "2" be a sub of 3 for example), i am hoping i can use the same function for selecting to do the inserting.
If you are using SQL Server 2005 or above, you may use recursive queries to get your information. Here is an example:
With tree (id, Name, ParentID, [level])
As (
Select id, Name, ParentID, 1
From [myTable]
Where ParentID = 0
Union All
Select child.id
,child.Name
,child.ParentID
,parent.[level] + 1 As [level]
From [myTable] As [child]
Inner Join [tree] As [parent]
On [child].ParentID = [parent].id)
Select * From [tree];
This query will return the row requested by the first portion (Where ParentID = 0) and all sub-rows recursively. Does this help you?
I'm not sure I understand what you want to have happen with your insert. Can you provide more information in terms of the expected result when you are done?
Good luck!
For the retrieval part, you can take a look at Common Table Expression. This feature can provide recursive operation using SQL.
For the insertion part, you can use the CTE above to regenerate the ID, and insert accordingly.
I hope this URL helps Self-Joins in SQL
This is the problem of finding the transitive closure of a graph in sql. SQL does not support this directly, which leaves you with three common strategies:
use a vendor specific SQL extension
store the Materialized Path from the root to the given node in each row
store the Nested Sets, that is the interval covered by the subtree rooted at a given node when nodes are labeled depth first
The first option is straightforward, and if you don't need database portability is probably the best. The second and third options have the advantage of being plain SQL, but require maintaining some de-normalized state. Updating a table that uses materialized paths is simple, but for fast queries your database must support indexes for prefix queries on string values. Nested sets avoid needing any string indexing features, but can require updating a lot of rows as you insert or remove nodes.
If you're fine with always using MSSQL, I'd use the vendor specific option Adrian mentioned.

ASP.NET, SQL 2005 "paging"

This is a followup on the question:
ASP.NET next/previous buttons to display single row in a form
As it says on the page above, theres a previous/next button on the page, that retrieves a single row one at a time.
Totally there's ~500,000 rows.
When I "page" through each subscribtion number, the form gets filled with subscriber details. What approach should I use on the SQL server?
Using the ROW_NUMBER() function seems a bit overkill as it has to number all ~500.000 rows (I guess?), so what other possible solutions are there?
Thanks in advance!
ROW_NUMBER() is probably your best choice.
From this MSDN article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186734.aspx
WITH OrderedOrders AS
(
SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderDate,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY OrderDate) AS 'RowNumber'
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
)
SELECT *
FROM OrderedOrders
WHERE RowNumber BETWEEN 50 AND 60;
And just subsititute 50 and 60 with a parameter for the row number you want.
Tommy, if your user has time to page through 500,000 rows at one page per row, then he/she is unique.
I guess what I am saying here is that you may be able to provide a better UX. When - Too many pages? Build a search feature.
There are two potential workarounds (for this purpose, using a start of 201, pages of 100):
SQL
SELECT TOP 100 * FROM MyTable WHERE ID > 200 ORDER BY ID
LINQ to SQL
var MyRows = (from t in db.Table
order by t.ID ascending
select t).Skip(200).Take(100)
If your ID field has a clustered index, use the former. If not, both of these will take the same amount of time (LINQ returns 500,000 rows, then skips, then takes).
If you're sorting by something that's NOT ID and you have it indexed, use ROW_NUMBER().
Edit: Because the OP isn't sorting by ID, the only solution is ROW_NUMBER(), which is the clause that I put at the end there.
In this case, the table isn't indexed, so please see here for ideas on how to index to improve query performance.

How to get the number of rows of the selected result from sqlite3?

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
}

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