SQL - Attain Previous Transaction Informaiton [duplicate] - sql-server

Question

I need to calculate the difference of a column between two lines of a table. Is there any way I can do this directly in SQL? I'm using Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
I'm looking for something like this:
SELECT value - (previous.value) FROM table
Imagining that the "previous" variable reference the latest selected row. Of course with a select like that I will end up with n-1 rows selected in a table with n rows, that's not a probably, actually is exactly what I need.
Is that possible in some way?

Answer 1

Use the lag function:
SELECT value - lag(value) OVER (ORDER BY Id) FROM table
Sequences used for Ids can skip values, so Id-1 does not always work.

Answer 2

SQL has no built in notion of order, so you need to order by some column for this to be meaningful. Something like this:
select t1.value - t2.value from table t1, table t2
where t1.primaryKey = t2.primaryKey - 1
If you know how to order things but not how to get the previous value given the current one (EG, you want to order alphabetically) then I don't know of a way to do that in standard SQL, but most SQL implementations will have extensions to do it.
Here is a way for SQL server that works if you can order rows such that each one is distinct:
select rank() OVER (ORDER BY id) as 'Rank', value into temp1 from t
select t1.value - t2.value from temp1 t1, temp1 t2
where t1.Rank = t2.Rank - 1
drop table temp1
If you need to break ties, you can add as many columns as necessary to the ORDER BY.

Answer 3

WITH CTE AS (
SELECT
rownum = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY columns_to_order_by),
value
FROM table
)
SELECT
curr.value - prev.value
FROM CTE cur
INNER JOIN CTE prev on prev.rownum = cur.rownum - 1

Answer 4

Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server and many more RDBMS engines have analytic functions called LAG and LEAD that do this very thing.
In SQL Server prior to 2012 you'd need to do the following:
SELECT value - (
SELECT TOP 1 value
FROM mytable m2
WHERE m2.col1 < m1.col1 OR (m2.col1 = m1.col1 AND m2.pk < m1.pk)
ORDER BY
col1, pk
)
FROM mytable m1
ORDER BY
col1, pk
, where COL1 is the column you are ordering by.
Having an index on (COL1, PK) will greatly improve this query.

Answer 5

LEFT JOIN the table to itself, with the join condition worked out so the row matched in the joined version of the table is one row previous, for your particular definition of "previous".
Update: At first I was thinking you would want to keep all rows, with NULLs for the condition where there was no previous row. Reading it again you just want that rows culled, so you should an inner join rather than a left join.
Update:
Newer versions of Sql Server also have the LAG and LEAD Windowing functions that can be used for this, too.

Answer 6

select t2.col from (
select col,MAX(ID) id from
(
select ROW_NUMBER() over(PARTITION by col order by col) id ,col from testtab t1) as t1
group by col) as t2

Answer 7

The selected answer will only work if there are no gaps in the sequence. However if you are using an autogenerated id, there are likely to be gaps in the sequence due to inserts that were rolled back.
This method should work if you have gaps
declare #temp (value int, primaryKey int, tempid int identity)
insert value, primarykey from mytable order by primarykey
select t1.value - t2.value from #temp t1
join #temp t2
on t1.tempid = t2.tempid - 1

Answer 8

Another way to refer to the previous row in an SQL query is to use a recursive common table expression (CTE):
CREATE TABLE t (counter INTEGER);
INSERT INTO t VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5);
WITH cte(counter, previous, difference) AS (
-- Anchor query
SELECT MIN(counter), 0, MIN(counter)
FROM t
UNION ALL
-- Recursive query
SELECT t.counter, cte.counter, t.counter - cte.counter
FROM t JOIN cte ON cte.counter = t.counter - 1
)
SELECT counter, previous, difference
FROM cte
ORDER BY counter;
Result:
counter
previous
difference
1
0
1
2
1
1
3
2
1
4
3
1
5
4
1
The anchor query generates the first row of the common table expression cte where it sets cte.counter to column t.counter in the first row of table t, cte.previous to 0, and cte.difference to the first row of t.counter.
The recursive query joins each row of common table expression cte to the previous row of table t. In the recursive query, cte.counter refers to t.counter in each row of table t, cte.previous refers to cte.counter in the previous row of cte, and t.counter - cte.counter refers to the difference between these two columns.
Note that a recursive CTE is more flexible than the LAG and LEAD functions because a row can refer to any arbitrary result of a previous row. (A recursive function or process is one where the input of the process is the output of the previous iteration of that process, except the first input which is a constant.)
I tested this query at SQLite Online.

Answer 9

You can use the following funtion to get current row value and previous row value:
SELECT value,
min(value) over (order by id rows between 1 preceding and 1
preceding) as value_prev
FROM table
Then you can just select value - value_prev from that select and get your answer