SQL Update NULL value from select statement query - sql-server

I'm new to posting on this site, but been using it for a while to get assistance to SQL queries.
I have an issue that I'm trying to resolve. I have 2 columns in a query which are machine and ID, for some machines the ID will be NULL, but for others they will have an ID value as set out below.
Machine ID
test1 3
test12 NULL
test3 4
test4 NULL
As the ID's will be present in the table, I need to update the NULL values, if the machine name is like the one which has a value, for example test 1 and test12 both should have ID 3, but test12 is showing NULL. What I want to be able to do is to replace the NULL for test12 with ID = 3, as the machine names are similar.
I have tried COALESCE, ISNULL and CASE, which all will update the values, but I need know the value, but I wont know it until I have done the select statement.
Any ideas on how to resolve this please?

As noted in the comments you will have to work out your match formula and specify it in the join condition. I believe the query you are looking for is:
Create Table Machines (Name Varchar(8000), ID Int)
Insert Into Machines Values ('test1', 3)
Insert Into Machines Values ('test12', Null)
Insert Into Machines Values ('test3', 4)
Insert Into Machines Values ('test4', Null)
Insert Into Machines Values ('test89', Null)
Insert Into Machines Values ('test8', 5)
Insert Into Machines Values ('test64', Null)
Update M1 Set M1.ID = M2.ID
From Machines M1
Join (Select Left(Name,5) NamePrefix, Max(ID) ID
From Machines
Where ID Is Not Null
Group By Left(Name,5)) M2
On Left(M1.Name, 5) = M2.NamePrefix
Where M1.ID Is Null
Select * From Machines
Note that I used a group by in the joined query in case multiple rows match and we only want one value returned. You can use window functions or other logic instead of the group by if you want to pick specifically which match is chosen.

Based on the requirements in your last comment:
There will be a number of records in the table, they are grouped by the letter before and after the '-' i.e. AB-CDE-L111, AB-CDE-L112, AB-CDE-L113, AB-CDE-L124, AB-CDE-L116 all of these should have in the query an ID of 45. The next set of machines will be AB-CCC-L111, AB-CCC-L112, AB-CCC-L115 all of these should have in the query an ID of 47 and finally there will be the last set of machine, AB-BBB-L113, AB-BBB-L144, AB-BBB-L115, AB-BBB-L120 all of these should have in the query an ID of 50. In the query, a machine returns a NULL ID then I need to update the query results, not the table.
So a SELECT query to get you your results would be:
declare #machine table (Machine varchar(30) not null, ID int null)
insert into #machine
values ('AB-CDE-L111', NULL),
('AB-CDE-L112', NULL),
('AB-CDE-L113', 45),
('AB-CDE-L124', NULL),
('AB-CDE-L116', NULL),
('AB-CCC-L111', NULL),
('AB-CCC-L112', NULL),
('AB-CCC-L113', 47),
('AB-CCC-L124', NULL),
('AB-CCC-L116', NULL),
('AB-BBB-L111', NULL),
('AB-BBB-L112', NULL),
('AB-BBB-L113', 50),
('AB-BBB-L124', NULL),
('AB-BBB-L116', NULL)
select m1.Machine, m2.ID
from #machine m1
inner join #machine m2
on m2.ID is not null
and left(m2.Machine, 6) = left(m1.Machine, 6)
order by m1.Machine
This assumes that:
1) There is always the same amount of characters making up the prefix to the machine code.
2) That there is only one Machine in each group that has been assigned an ID.
If either of these assumptions is wrong then you may need to do extra string manipulation in the case of 1) and use some kind of function (ROW_NUMBER etc.) in the case of 2) to avoid duplicate rows (although you could just use SELECT DISTINCT if the IDs would be the same).

Related

CTE to pull entire tree from arbitrary entry

I'm trying to build a CTE which will pull back all records which are related to a given, arbitrary record in the database.
Create table Requests (
Id bigint,
OriginalId bigint NULL,
FollowupId bigint NULL
)
insert into Requests VALUES (1, null, 3)
insert into Requests VALUES (2, 1, 8)
insert into Requests VALUES (3, 1, 4)
insert into Requests VALUES (4, 3, null)
insert into Requests VALUES (5, null, null)
insert into Requests VALUES (6, null, 7)
insert into Requests VALUES (7, 6, null)
insert into Requests VALUES (8, 2, null)
OriginalId is always the Id of a previous record (or null). FollowupId points to the most recent followup record (which, in turn, points back via OriginalId) and can probably be ignored, but it's there if it's helpful.
I can easily pull back either all ancestors or all descendants of a given record using the following CTE
;With TransactionList (Id, originalId, followupId, Steps)
AS
(
Select Id, originalId, followupId, 0 as Steps from requests where Id = #startId
union all
select reqs.Id, reqs.originalId, reqs.followupId, Steps + 1 from requests reqs
inner join TransactionList tl on tl.Id = reqs.originalId --or tl.originalId = reqs.Id
)
SELECT Id from TransactionList
However, if I use both where clauses, I run into recursion, hit the recursion limit, and it bombs out. Even combining both sets, I don't get the entire tree - just one branch from it.
I don't care about anything other than the list of Ids. They don't need to be sorted, or to display their relationship or anything. Doesn't hurt, but not necessary. But I need every Id in a given tree to pull back the same list when it's passed as #startId.
As an example of what I'd like to see, this is what the output should be when #startId is set to any value 1-4 or 8:
1
2
3
4
8
And for either 6 or 7, I get back both 6 and 7.
You can just create 2 CTE's.
The first CTE will get the Root of the hierarchy, and the second will use the Root ID to get the descendants of the Root.
;WITH cteRoot AS (
SELECT *, 0 [Level]
FROM Requests
WHERE Id = #startId
UNION ALL
SELECT r.*, [Level] + 1
FROM Requests r
JOIN cteRoot cte ON r.Id = cte.OriginalID
),
cteDesc AS (
SELECT *
FROM cteRoot
WHERE OriginalId IS NULL
UNION ALL
SELECT r.*, [Level] + 1
FROM Requests r
JOIN cteDesc cte ON r.OriginalId = cte.Id
)
SELECT * FROM cteDesc
SQL Fiddle

Keep nulls with two IN()

I'm refactoring very old code. Currently, PHP generates a separate select for every value. Say loc contains 1,2 and data contains a,b, it generates
select val from tablename where loc_id=1 and data_id=a;
select val from tablename where loc_id=1 and data_id=b;
select val from tablename where loc_id=2 and data_id=a;
select val from tablename where loc_id=2 and data_id=b;
...etc which all return either a single value or nothing. That meant I always had n(loc_id)*n(data_id) results, including nulls, which is necessary for subsequent processing. Knowing the order, this was used to generate an HTML table. Both data_id and loc_id can in theory scale up to a couple thousands (which is obviously not great in a table, but that's another concern).
+-----------+-----------+
| data_id 1 | data_id 2 |
+----------+-----------+-----------+
| loc_id 1 | - | 999.99 |
+----------+-----------+-----------+
+ loc_id 2 | 888.88 | - |
+----------+-----------+-----------+
To speed things up, I was looking at replacing this with a single query:
select val from tablename where loc_id in (1,2) and data_id in (a,b) order by loc_id asc, data_id asc;
to get a result like (below) and iterate to build my table.
Rownum VAL
------- --------
1 null
2 999.99
3 777.77
4 null
Unfortunately that approach drops the nulls from the resultset so I end up with
Rownum VAL
------- --------
1 999.99
2 777.77
Note that it is possible that neither data_id or loc_id have any match, in which case I would still need a null, null.
So I don't know which value matches which. I ways to match with the expected loc_id/data_id combination in php if I add loc_id and data_id... but that's getting messy.
Still a novice in SQL in general and that's absolutely the first time I work on PostgreSQL so hopefully that's not too obvious... As I post this I'm looking at two ways to solve this: any in array[] and joins. Will update if anything new is found.
tl;dr question
How do I do a where loc_id in (1,2) and data_id in (a,b) and keep the nulls so that I always get n(loc)*n(data) results?
You can achieve that in a single query with two steps:
Generate a matrix of all desired rows in the output.
LEFT [OUTER] JOIN to actual rows.
You get at least one row for every cell in your table.
If (loc_id, data_id) is unique, you get exactly one row.
SELECT t.val
FROM (VALUES (1), (2)) AS l(loc_id)
CROSS JOIN (VALUES ('a'), ('b')) AS d(data_id) -- generate total grid of rows
LEFT JOIN tablname t USING (loc_id, data_id) -- attach matching rows (if any)
ORDER BY l.loc_id, d.data_id;
Works for any number of columns with any number of values.
For your simple case:
SELECT t.val
FROM (
VALUES
(1, 'a'), (1, 'b')
, (2, 'a'), (2, 'b')
) AS ld (loc_id, data_id) -- total grid of rows
LEFT JOIN tablname t USING (loc_id, data_id) -- attach matching rows (if any)
ORDER BY ld.loc_id, ld.data_id;
where (loc_id in (1,2) or loc_id is null)
and (data_id in (a,b) or data_id is null)
Select the fields you use for filtering, so you know where the values came from:
select loc,data,val from tablename where loc in (1,2) and data in (a,b);
You won't get nulls this way either, but it's not a problem anymore. You know which fields are missing, and you know those are nulls.

sql server TOP command with order by clause

CREATE DATABASE TEST
USE TEST
CREATE TABLE TBL_TEMP
(
ID INT,
NAME VARCHAR(100),
CREATED_ON DATETIME
)
INSERT INTO TBL_TEMP VALUES (1, 'A', NULL)
INSERT INTO TBL_TEMP VALUES (2, 'B', NULL)
INSERT INTO TBL_TEMP VALUES (3, 'C', NULL)
INSERT INTO TBL_TEMP VALUES (4, 'D', NULL)
SELECT TOP 1 *
FROM TBL_TEMP
ORDER BY CREATED_ON
Result:
ID NAME CREATED_ON
------------------
2 B NULL
SELECT TOP 1 * FROM TBL_TEMP
Result:
ID NAME CREATED_ON
--------------------
1 A NULL
Why top 1 gives two different results, is it that when order by clause is used it picks random row and when not used then it gives proper top record ?
is it a kind of bug in sql server 2008 ?
SQL does not guarantee an order unless you specify an ORDER BY clause, so in the second example you get the first-inserted row by good fortune.
If you specify an ORDER BY clause, the order is not defined if the values to sort on are identical. SQL could have selected any one of the four.
This is not a bug, but defined behaviour in SQL.

SQLite UPSERT / UPDATE OR INSERT

I need to perform UPSERT / INSERT OR UPDATE against a SQLite Database.
There is the command INSERT OR REPLACE which in many cases can be useful. But if you want to keep your id's with autoincrement in place because of foreign keys, it does not work since it deletes the row, creates a new one and consequently this new row has a new ID.
This would be the table:
players - (primary key on id, user_name unique)
| id | user_name | age |
------------------------------
| 1982 | johnny | 23 |
| 1983 | steven | 29 |
| 1984 | pepee | 40 |
Q&A Style
Well, after researching and fighting with the problem for hours, I found out that there are two ways to accomplish this, depending on the structure of your table and if you have foreign keys restrictions activated to maintain integrity. I'd like to share this in a clean format to save some time to the people that may be in my situation.
Option 1: You can afford deleting the row
In other words, you don't have foreign key, or if you have them, your SQLite engine is configured so that there no are integrity exceptions. The way to go is INSERT OR REPLACE. If you are trying to insert/update a player whose ID already exists, the SQLite engine will delete that row and insert the data you are providing. Now the question comes: what to do to keep the old ID associated?
Let's say we want to UPSERT with the data user_name='steven' and age=32.
Look at this code:
INSERT INTO players (id, name, age)
VALUES (
coalesce((select id from players where user_name='steven'),
(select max(id) from drawings) + 1),
32)
The trick is in coalesce. It returns the id of the user 'steven' if any, and otherwise, it returns a new fresh id.
Option 2: You cannot afford deleting the row
After monkeying around with the previous solution, I realized that in my case that could end up destroying data, since this ID works as a foreign key for other table. Besides, I created the table with the clause ON DELETE CASCADE, which would mean that it'd delete data silently. Dangerous.
So, I first thought of a IF clause, but SQLite only has CASE. And this CASE can't be used (or at least I did not manage it) to perform one UPDATE query if EXISTS(select id from players where user_name='steven'), and INSERT if it didn't. No go.
And then, finally I used the brute force, with success. The logic is, for each UPSERT that you want to perform, first execute a INSERT OR IGNORE to make sure there is a row with our user, and then execute an UPDATE query with exactly the same data you tried to insert.
Same data as before: user_name='steven' and age=32.
-- make sure it exists
INSERT OR IGNORE INTO players (user_name, age) VALUES ('steven', 32);
-- make sure it has the right data
UPDATE players SET user_name='steven', age=32 WHERE user_name='steven';
And that's all!
EDIT
As Andy has commented, trying to insert first and then update may lead to firing triggers more often than expected. This is not in my opinion a data safety issue, but it is true that firing unnecessary events makes little sense. Therefore, a improved solution would be:
-- Try to update any existing row
UPDATE players SET age=32 WHERE user_name='steven';
-- Make sure it exists
INSERT OR IGNORE INTO players (user_name, age) VALUES ('steven', 32);
This is a late answer. Starting from SQLIte 3.24.0, released on June 4, 2018, there is finally a support for UPSERT clause following PostgreSQL syntax.
INSERT INTO players (user_name, age)
VALUES('steven', 32)
ON CONFLICT(user_name)
DO UPDATE SET age=excluded.age;
Note: For those having to use a version of SQLite earlier than 3.24.0, please reference this answer below (posted by me, #MarqueIV).
However if you do have the option to upgrade, you are strongly encouraged to do so as unlike my solution, the one posted here achieves the desired behavior in a single statement. Plus you get all the other features, improvements and bug fixes that usually come with a more recent release.
Here's an approach that doesn't require the brute-force 'ignore' which would only work if there was a key violation. This way works based on any conditions you specify in the update.
Try this...
-- Try to update any existing row
UPDATE players
SET age=32
WHERE user_name='steven';
-- If no update happened (i.e. the row didn't exist) then insert one
INSERT INTO players (user_name, age)
SELECT 'steven', 32
WHERE (Select Changes() = 0);
How It Works
The 'magic sauce' here is using Changes() in the Where clause. Changes() represents the number of rows affected by the last operation, which in this case is the update.
In the above example, if there are no changes from the update (i.e. the record doesn't exist) then Changes() = 0 so the Where clause in the Insert statement evaluates to true and a new row is inserted with the specified data.
If the Update did update an existing row, then Changes() = 1 (or more accurately, not zero if more than one row was updated), so the 'Where' clause in the Insert now evaluates to false and thus no insert will take place.
The beauty of this is there's no brute-force needed, nor unnecessarily deleting, then re-inserting data which may result in messing up downstream keys in foreign-key relationships.
Additionally, since it's just a standard Where clause, it can be based on anything you define, not just key violations. Likewise, you can use Changes() in combination with anything else you want/need anywhere expressions are allowed.
The problem with all presented answers it complete lack of taking triggers (and probably other side effects) into account.
Solution like
INSERT OR IGNORE ...
UPDATE ...
leads to both triggers executed (for insert and then for update) when row does not exist.
Proper solution is
UPDATE OR IGNORE ...
INSERT OR IGNORE ...
in that case only one statement is executed (when row exists or not).
To have a pure UPSERT with no holes (for programmers) that don't relay on unique and other keys:
UPDATE players SET user_name="gil", age=32 WHERE user_name='george';
SELECT changes();
SELECT changes() will return the number of updates done in the last inquire.
Then check if return value from changes() is 0, if so execute:
INSERT INTO players (user_name, age) VALUES ('gil', 32);
Option 1: Insert -> Update
If you like to avoid both changes()=0 and INSERT OR IGNORE even if you cannot afford deleting the row - You can use this logic;
First, insert (if not exists) and then update by filtering with the unique key.
Example
-- Table structure
CREATE TABLE players (
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
user_name VARCHAR (255) NOT NULL
UNIQUE,
age INTEGER NOT NULL
);
-- Insert if NOT exists
INSERT INTO players (user_name, age)
SELECT 'johnny', 20
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM players WHERE user_name='johnny' AND age=20);
-- Update (will affect row, only if found)
-- no point to update user_name to 'johnny' since it's unique, and we filter by it as well
UPDATE players
SET age=20
WHERE user_name='johnny';
Regarding Triggers
Notice: I haven't tested it to see the which triggers are being called, but I assume the following:
if row does not exists
BEFORE INSERT
INSERT using INSTEAD OF
AFTER INSERT
BEFORE UPDATE
UPDATE using INSTEAD OF
AFTER UPDATE
if row does exists
BEFORE UPDATE
UPDATE using INSTEAD OF
AFTER UPDATE
Option 2: Insert or replace - keep your own ID
in this way you can have a single SQL command
-- Table structure
CREATE TABLE players (
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
user_name VARCHAR (255) NOT NULL
UNIQUE,
age INTEGER NOT NULL
);
-- Single command to insert or update
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO players
(id, user_name, age)
VALUES ((SELECT id from players WHERE user_name='johnny' AND age=20),
'johnny',
20);
Edit: added option 2.
You can also just add an ON CONFLICT REPLACE clause to your user_name unique constraint and then just INSERT away, leaving it to SQLite to figure out what to do in case of a conflict. See:https://sqlite.org/lang_conflict.html.
Also note the sentence regarding delete triggers: When the REPLACE conflict resolution strategy deletes rows in order to satisfy a constraint, delete triggers fire if and only if recursive triggers are enabled.
For those who have the latest version of sqlite available, you can still do it in a single statement using INSERT OR REPLACE but beware you need to set all the values. However this "clever" SQL works by use of a left-join on the table into which you are inserting / updating and ifnull:
import sqlite3
con = sqlite3.connect( ":memory:" )
cur = con.cursor()
cur.execute("create table test( id varchar(20) PRIMARY KEY, value int, value2 int )")
cur.executemany("insert into test (id, value, value2) values (:id, :value, :value2)",
[ {'id': 'A', 'value' : 1, 'value2' : 8 }, {'id': 'B', 'value' : 3, 'value2' : 10 } ] )
cur.execute('select * from test')
print( cur.fetchall())
con.commit()
cur = con.cursor()
# upsert using insert or replace.
# when id is found it should modify value but ignore value2
# when id is not found it will enter a record with value and value2
upsert = '''
insert or replace into test
select d.id, d.value, ifnull(t.value2, d.value2) from ( select :id as id, :value as value, :value2 as value2 ) d
left join test t on d.id = t.id
'''
upsert_data = [ { 'id' : 'B', 'value' : 4, 'value2' : 5 },
{ 'id' : 'C', 'value' : 3, 'value2' : 12 } ]
cur.executemany( upsert, upsert_data )
cur.execute('select * from test')
print( cur.fetchall())
The first few lines of that code are setting up the table, with a single ID primary key column and two values. It then enters data with IDs 'A' and 'B'
The second section creates the 'upsert' text, and calls it for 2 rows of data, one with the ID of 'B' which is found and one with 'C' which is not found.
When you run it, you'll find the data at the end produces
$python3 main.py
[('A', 1, 8), ('B', 3, 10)]
[('A', 1, 8), ('B', 4, 10), ('C', 3, 12)]
B 'updated' value to 4 but value2 (5) was ignored, C inserted.
Note: this does not work if your table has an auto-incremented primary key as INSERT OR REPLACE will replace the number with a new one.
A slight modification to add such a column
import sqlite3
con = sqlite3.connect( ":memory:" )
cur = con.cursor()
cur.execute("create table test( pkey integer primary key autoincrement not null, id varchar(20) UNIQUE not null, value int, value2 int )")
cur.executemany("insert into test (id, value, value2) values (:id, :value, :value2)",
[ {'id': 'A', 'value' : 1, 'value2' : 8 }, {'id': 'B', 'value' : 3, 'value2' : 10 } ] )
cur.execute('select * from test')
print( cur.fetchall())
con.commit()
cur = con.cursor()
# upsert using insert or replace.
# when id is found it should modify value but ignore value2
# when id is not found it will enter a record with value and value2
upsert = '''
insert or replace into test (id, value, value2)
select d.id, d.value, ifnull(t.value2, d.value2) from ( select :id as id, :value as value, :value2 as value2 ) d
left join test t on d.id = t.id
'''
upsert_data = [ { 'id' : 'B', 'value' : 4, 'value2' : 5 },
{ 'id' : 'C', 'value' : 3, 'value2' : 12 } ]
cur.executemany( upsert, upsert_data )
cur.execute('select * from test')
print( cur.fetchall())
output is now:
$python3 main.py
[(1, 'A', 1, 8), (2, 'B', 3, 10)]
[(1, 'A', 1, 8), (3, 'B', 4, 10), (4, 'C', 3, 12)]
Note pkey 2 is replaced with 3 for id 'B'
This is therefore not ideal but is a good solution when:
You don't have an auto-generated primary key
You want to create an 'upsert' query with bound parameters
You want to use executemany() to merge in multiple rows of data in one go.

JOIN ON subselect returns what I want, but surrounding select is missing records when subselect returns NULL

I have a table where I am storing records with a Created_On date and a Last_Updated_On date. Each new record will be written with a Created_On, and each subsequent update writes a new row with the same Created_On, but an updated Last_Updated_On.
I am trying to design a query to return the newest row of each. What I have looks something like this:
SELECT
t1.[id] as id,
t1.[Store_Number] as storeNumber,
t1.[Date_Of_Inventory] as dateOfInventory,
t1.[Created_On] as createdOn,
t1.[Last_Updated_On] as lastUpdatedOn
FROM [UserData].[dbo].[StoreResponses] t1
JOIN (
SELECT
[Store_Number],
[Date_Of_Inventory],
MAX([Created_On]) co,
MAX([Last_Updated_On]) luo
FROM [UserData].[dbo].[StoreResponses]
GROUP BY [Store_Number],[Date_Of_Inventory]) t2
ON
t1.[Store_Number] = t2.[Store_Number]
AND t1.[Created_On] = t2.co
AND t1.[Last_Updated_On] = t2.luo
AND t1.[Date_Of_Inventory] = t2.[Date_Of_Inventory]
WHERE t1.[Store_Number] = 123
ORDER BY t1.[Created_On] ASC
The subselect works fine...I see X number of rows, grouped by Store_Number and Date_Of_Inventory, some of which have luo (Last_Updated_On) values of NULL. However, those rows in the sub-select where luo is null do not appear in the overall results. In other words, where I get 6 results in the sub-select, I only get 2 in the overall results, and its only those rows where the Last_Updated_On is not NULL.
So, as a test, I wrote the following:
SELECT 1 WHERE NULL = NULL
And got no results, but, when I run:
SELECT 1 WHERE 1 = 1
I get back a result of 1. Its as if SQL Server is not relating NULL to NULL.
How can I fix this? Why wouldn't two fields compare when both values are NULL?
You could use Coalesce (example assuming Store_Number is an integer)
ON
Coalesce(t1.[Store_Number],0) = Coalesce(t2.[Store_Number],0)
The ANSI Null comparison is not enabled by default; NULL doesn't equal NULL.
You can enable this (if your business case and your Database design usage of NULL requires this) by the Hint:
SET ansi_nulls off
Another alternative basic turn around using:
ON ((t1.[Store_Number] = t2.[Store_Number]) OR
(t1.[Store_Number] IS NULL AND t2.[Store_Number] IS NULL))
Executing your POC:
SET ansi_nulls off
SELECT 1 WHERE NULL = NULL
Returns:
1
This also works:
AND EXISTS (SELECT t1.Store_Number INTERSECT SELECT t2.Store_Number)

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