How do I get the position of a given value inside a table column. I need to get the column number.
In psuedo-code:
For each through the column column collection in the result set.
When you find the value, note the index number
This assumes one row only.
You can't do this in T-SQL: only a client language such as .net or Java
One option is to query the ColID column from syscolumns for your table [ select [name],[colid] from dbo.syscolumns where [id] = object_id('tablename') ]. Note that I'm not sure if this is guaranteed to be sequential or if gaps could appear if a column is dropped.
Related
In my scenario i have a table with a lot of optional columns (20 columns in total, say form col00 to col19, every column contain an integer not nullable).
When the column contains a 0 it's considered empty any other values have a meaning.
Any subset of that 20 columns could be queried, so i should query for col01 = int1 and col17 = int2.
I need to improve the performance of such queries, but i don't know how to create a representative index.
Surely i can monitor table for a while and see which columns subset are searchest most, but this is not a satisfiable solution to me (the table is periodically regenerated every few months..and the "tags" encoded that way may change)
I think the best you'll be able to do is to index every column by itself, then use the set operator INTERSECT... in a subquery of your where clause.
INTERSECT returns distinct rows that are output by both the left and right input queries operator. So if you select the primary key of the table in the INTERSECT then you should have a good subquery that can be used in a where-clause. This will require you to re-write your queries however.
Example:
SELECT *
FROM tablename
WHERE primary_key = (
SELECT primary_key FROM tablename WHERE col01 = int1
INTERSECT
SELECT primary_key FROM tablename WHERE col17 = int2
)
That should be sargable, if col01 and col17 have their own index.
I'm trying to randomly populate a column with values from another table using this statement:
UPDATE dbo.SERVICE_TICKET
SET Vehicle_Type = (SELECT TOP 1 [text]
FROM dbo.vehicle_typ
WHERE id = abs(checksum(NewID()))%21)
It seems to work fine, however the value NULL is inserted into the column. How can I get rid of the NULL and only insert the values from the table?
This can happen when you don't have an appropriate index on the ID column of your vehicle_typ table. Here's a smaller query that exhibits the same problem:
create table T (ID int null)
insert into T(ID) values (0),(1),(2),(3)
select top 1 * from T where ID = abs(checksum(NewID()))%3
Because there's no index on T, what happens is that SQL Server performs a table scan and then, for each row, attempts to satisfy the where clause. Which means that, for each row it evaluates abs(checksum(NewID()))%3 anew. You'll only get a result if, by chance, that expression produces, say, 1 when it's evaluated for the row with ID 1.
If possible (I don't know your table structure) I would first populate a column in SERVICE_TICKET with a random number between 0 and 20 and then perform this update using the already generated number. Otherwise, with the current query structure, you're always relying on SQL Server being clever enough to only evaluate abs(checksum(NewID()))%21once for each outer row, which it may not always do (as you've already found out).
#Damien_The_Unbeliever explained why your query fails.
My first variant was not correct, because I didn't understand the problem in full.
You want to set each row in SERVICE_TICKET to a different random value from vehicle_typ.
To fix it simply order by random number, rather than comparing a random number with ID. Like this (and you don't care how many rows are in vehicle_typ as long as there is at least one row there).
WITH
CTE
AS
(
SELECT
dbo.SERVICE_TICKET.Vehicle_Type
CA.[text]
FROM
dbo.SERVICE_TICKET
CROSS APPLY
(
SELECT TOP 1 [text]
FROM dbo.vehicle_typ
ORDER BY NewID()
) AS CA
)
UPDATE CTE
SET Vehicle_Type = [text];
At first we make a Common Table Expression, you can think of it as a temporary table. For each row in SERVICE_TICKET we pick one random row from vehicle_typ using CROSS APPLY. Then we UPDATE the original table with chosen rows.
I have a table of +15 million rows and 36 columns, there are two rows of data for every object to which the table refers. I need to:
Move one Column 0 down one space so that the useful information from that column appears in the row below.
Here is a sample of the data with less columns:
Table name = ekd0310
I want to shift Column 0 down 1
Column 0 Column 1 Column 2 Column 3
B02100AA.CZE
B02100AA.CZF I MIGA0027 SUBDIREC.019
B02100AA.CZG
B02100AA.CZH I MIGA0027 SUBDIREC.019
B02100AA.CZI
B02100AA.CZJ I MIGA0027 SUBDIREC.019
B02100AA.CZK '
THe function that you are looking for is probably lead(). You can use this if you assume that there is a column that specifies the ordering. An example:
select e.*, lead(col) over (order by id) as nextcol
from ekd0310 e;
Although this is an ANSI standard function, not all databases support it (yet). You can do something similar with correlated subqueries. Similarly, the above returns the information, but it is possible to do this as an update as well.
I want a list of properties about a given table and for a specific record of data from that table - in one result
Something like this:
Column Name , DataLength, SchemaLengthMax
...and for only one record (based on a where filter)
So what Im thinking is something like this:
- Get a list of columns from sys.columns and also the schema-based maxlength value
- populate column names into a temp table that includes (column_name, data_length, schema_size_max)
- now loop over that temp table and for each column name, fetch the data for that column based on a specific record, then update the temp table with the length of this data
- finally, select from the temp table
sound reasonable?
Yup. That way works. Not sure if it's the best, since it involves one iteration per column along with the where condition on the source table.
Consider this, instead :
Get the candidate records into a temporary table after applying the where condition. Make sure to get a primary key. If there is no primary key, get a rowid. (assuming SQL Server 2005 or above).
Create a temporary table (Say, #RecValueLens) that has three columns : Primary_key_Value, MyColumnName, MyValueLen
Loop through the list of column names (after taking only the column names into another temporary table) and build sql statement shown in Step 4.
Insert Into #RecValueLens (Primary_Key_Value, MyColumnName, MyValueLen)
Select Max(Primary_Key_Goes_Here), Max('Column_Name_Goes_Here') as ColumnName, Len(Max(Column_Name)) as ValueMyLen From Source_Table_Goes_Here
Group By Primary_Key_Goes_Here
So, if there are 10 columns, you will have 10 insert statements. You could either insert them into a temporary table and run it as a loop. If the number of columns is few, you could concatenate all statements into a single batch.
Run the SQL Statement(s) from above. So, you have Record-wise, column-wise, Value lengths. What is left is to get the column definition.
Get the column definition from sys.columns into a temporary table and join with the #RecValueLens to get the output.
Do you want me to write it for you ?
I have an update statement in SQL server where there are four possible values that can be assigned based on the join. It appears that SQL has an algorithm for choosing one value over another, and I'm not sure how that algorithm works.
As an example, say there is a table called Source with two columns (Match and Data) structured as below:
(The match column contains only 1's, the Data column increments by 1 for every row)
Match Data
`--------------------------
1 1
1 2
1 3
1 4
That table will update another table called Destination with the same two columns structured as below:
Match Data
`--------------------------
1 NULL
If you want to update the ID field in Destination in the following way:
UPDATE
Destination
SET
Data = Source.Data
FROM
Destination
INNER JOIN
Source
ON
Destination.Match = Source.Match
there will be four possible options that Destination.ID will be set to after this query is run. I've found that messing with the indexes of Source will have an impact on what Destination is set to, and it appears that SQL Server just updates the Destination table with the first value it finds that matches.
Is that accurate? Is it possible that SQL Server is updating the Destination with every possible value sequentially and I end up with the same kind of result as if it were updating with the first value it finds? It seems to be possibly problematic that it will seemingly randomly choose one row to update, as opposed to throwing an error when presented with this situation.
Thank you.
P.S. I apologize for the poor formatting. Hopefully, the intent is clear.
It sets all of the results to the Data. Which one you end up with after the query depends on the order of the results returned (which one it sets last).
Since there's no ORDER BY clause, you're left with whatever order Sql Server comes up with. That will normally follow the physical order of the records on disk, and that in turn typically follows the clustered index for a table. But this order isn't set in stone, particularly when joins are involved. If a join matches on a column with an index other than the clustered index, it may well order the results based on that index instead. In the end, unless you give it an ORDER BY clause, Sql Server will return the results in whatever order it thinks it can do fastest.
You can play with this by turning your upate query into a select query, so you can see the results. Notice which record comes first and which record comes last in the source table for each record of the destination table. Compare that with the results of your update query. Then play with your indexes again and check the results once more to see what you get.
Of course, it can be tricky here because UPDATE statements are not allowed to use an ORDER BY clause, so regardless of what you find, you should really write the join so it matches the destination table 1:1. You may find the APPLY operator useful in achieving this goal, and you can use it to effectively JOIN to another table and guarantee the join only matches one record.
The choice is not deterministic and it can be any of the source rows.
You can try
DECLARE #Source TABLE(Match INT, Data INT);
INSERT INTO #Source
VALUES
(1, 1),
(1, 2),
(1, 3),
(1, 4);
DECLARE #Destination TABLE(Match INT, Data INT);
INSERT INTO #Destination
VALUES
(1, NULL);
UPDATE Destination
SET Data = Source.Data
FROM #Destination Destination
INNER JOIN #Source Source
ON Destination.Match = Source.Match;
SELECT *
FROM #Destination;
And look at the actual execution plan. I see the following.
The output columns from #Destination are Bmk1000, Match. Bmk1000 is an internal row identifier (used here due to lack of clustered index in this example) and would be different for each row emitted from #Destination (if there was more than one).
The single row is then joined onto the four matching rows in #Source and the resultant four rows are passed into a stream aggregate.
The stream aggregate groups by Bmk1000 and collapses the multiple matching rows down to one. The operation performed by this aggregate is ANY(#Source.[Data]).
The ANY aggregate is an internal aggregate function not available in TSQL itself. No guarantees are made about which of the four source rows will be chosen.
Finally the single row per group feeds into the UPDATE operator to update the row with whatever value the ANY aggregate returned.
If you want deterministic results then you can use an aggregate function yourself...
WITH GroupedSource AS
(
SELECT Match,
MAX(Data) AS Data
FROM #Source
GROUP BY Match
)
UPDATE Destination
SET Data = Source.Data
FROM #Destination Destination
INNER JOIN GroupedSource Source
ON Destination.Match = Source.Match;
Or use ROW_NUMBER...
WITH RankedSource AS
(
SELECT Match,
Data,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY Match ORDER BY Data DESC) AS RN
FROM #Source
)
UPDATE Destination
SET Data = Source.Data
FROM #Destination Destination
INNER JOIN RankedSource Source
ON Destination.Match = Source.Match
WHERE RN = 1;
The latter form is generally more useful as in the event you need to set multiple columns this will ensure that all values used are from the same source row. In order to be deterministic the combination of partition by and order by columns should be unique.