Question

Select Group By command in VFP9

Asked by: Castlewood

We just moved from VFP7 to VFP9.
The following command will run without problem in VFP7 but will generate an error in VFP9:
SELECT *, sum(qty) as qty_sum from tab1 GROUP BY parent
the error message is: SQL: Group by clause is missing or invalid

The field "parent" is in the tab1 for sure. If I change the above command to be:
SELECT parent, fld1, fld2, fld3, fld4, sum(qty) as qty_sum from tab1 GROUP BY parent
the command will work. But there are more than 30 fields in tab1. I don't want to explicitly need to list all fields. Please help. Is there anyway to solve this?

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Asked On
2009-09-04 at 14:00:37ID24708899
Tags

Visual Foxpro

Topics

FoxPro Database

,

SQL Query Syntax

,

dBase

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Answers

 

by: ralmadaPosted on 2009-09-04 at 14:14:27ID: 25263393

You cannot use *. You basically cannot include any column that is not contained in either the aggregated function or the group by statement.

try like this:

SELECT parent, sum(qty) as qty_sum from tab1 GROUP BY parent

 

by: Olaf_DoschkePosted on 2009-09-04 at 14:25:58ID: 25263453

Your SQL won't work too. You need all unaggregated fields in the GROUP BY clause to make it valid. Earlier VFP versions were forgiving with this. Think about it: What should be put into the result, if you don't specify, what value of the group of records you want? A random record? VFP8 got ANSI conform and more precise.

As a fast solution you can SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR 70, but in the long run better rethink your SQL. Here's a sample on how to transform SQL. This is not the only way, there are of course many ways.

Bye, Olaf.

Open Database (Home(2)+"\Northwind\northwind.dbc")
 
* VFP7 style:
 
SELECT Customers.*, count(*) as ordercount ;
FROM Customers ;
Left JOIN Orders ;
ON Orders.customerid=Customers.customerid ;
GROUP BY Customers.customerid ; 
ORDER BY Customers.customerid 
 
* VFP9 style:
 
SELECT customers.*, (SELECT COUNT(*) AS ordercount FROM Orders ; 
    WHERE Orders.customerid=Customers.customerid) ;
 FROM Customers  ;
ORDER BY customerid

                                              
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by: pcelbaPosted on 2009-09-04 at 14:37:06ID: 25263521

I would say NO need to rethink something just now. Simply

SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR 70

and it will work.

VFP 7 engine was clever enough to decide what nonaggregate field contents to place on the output and it was correct in most of the cases... But I have to say VFP 9 SQL engine has many more useful features so the updates forced by new GROUP BY behavior is worth to do.

 

by: CastlewoodPosted on 2009-09-04 at 15:15:45ID: 31625139

Thank you all. You guys are awesome.

 

by: Olaf_DoschkePosted on 2009-09-05 at 03:47:06ID: 25265680

Yes, pcelba, the update is worth to do.

It's only half true, though, that VFP7 was always clever enough to get the nonaggregate fields of the right record. What's true is, it was alsways taking the first record of a group, either by order - if there was an order by clause - or by recno. No matter if that's the exact truth or not, it was at least always reproducable and not random. Therefore the VFP8 is exaggerating the wrong behavior by saying "This SELECT statement returns ambiguous data in earlier VFP versions". If the GROUP BY worked for the developer, giving the right results, it worked always and SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR 70 will make it work the same way again. On that half you are right.

But there could have been situation you couldn't get a group by working in VFP7 the way you wanted it, especially if the correct values of non aggregated fields you wanted were not in the record VFP picked. And in such situations you had to rework the sql anyway at that time. That's why old and wrong GROUP BY clauses are not that harmful as the help suggests, because IF you had a problem with the ambigous results of a GROUP BY in VFP7 you already fixed that in VFP7, even if it never was clear to you, that the GROUP BY is/could be ambigous.

For that reason I also think that SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR 70 is a good advice. At least it's not a bad advice. But it's also good to have all the enhancements of VFP9 SQL.

By the way it's not only the GROUP BY clause, also HAVING clauses are handled more strict: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813361/en-us

Bye, Olaf.

 

by: pcelbaPosted on 2009-09-05 at 10:44:05ID: 25267088

Good explanation, thanks Olaf.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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