Question

Grouping with Dates ~ Problem with Dupes in Query

Asked by: Roxanne25

Hi, I am working with a large query and I'm having trouble with duplicates when doing grouping.

Data looks like this:

ORDER NUMBER              LINE NUMBER              PROMISE DATE             REVENUE                  COST
ORD123                          1                                 5/1/2007                      100.00                      50.00
ORD123                          2                                 NULL                             200.00                     100.00

Trying to group the data at the order header level.  However, this promise date field is causing me a lot of problems.  I tried doing MAX() on the promise date, but it yelled at me for having NULLs and it basically didn't do anything.

I then wrote a case statement to put 12/31/1900 as the date if the date was null.  Then I wrote a second query off that to pull the max() again...it still returned 2 rows...

What am I doing wrong and how do I get it to group this?

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Asked On
2007-05-22 at 06:17:55ID22587008
Topics

SQL Server 2005

,

SQL Query Syntax

Participating Experts
3
Points
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: ksaulPosted on 2007-05-22 at 07:13:19ID: 19134049

You also have different Revenue and Cost data for each row and if you want to retrieve those along with the max promise date you would have to get the aggregate in a subquery and then select the orders that match those dates.  Like:

SELECT *
FROM YourOrderTable
INNER JOIN (SELECT [ORDER NUMBER], MAX([PROMISE DATE]) AS MaxDate
  FROM YourOrderTable
  GROUP BY [ORDER NUMBER]) AS MaxDates
  ON YourOrderTable.[ORDER NUMBER] = MaxDates.[ORDER NUMBER] AND YorOrderTable.[PROMISE DATE] = MaxDates.MaxDate

 

by: Roxanne25Posted on 2007-05-22 at 07:20:34ID: 19134120

Well I have tried writing the query like this:

SELECT ORDER_NO, MAX(PROMISE_DT) , SUM(REVENUE), SUM(COST)
FROM OPENORDERS
GROUP BY ORDER_NO

And it still returns 2 rows for the ones that have multiple promise dates... the max isn't working.

Are you saying just write my query normally and just do the inner join you wrote?

 

by: daletianPosted on 2007-05-22 at 08:19:19ID: 19134680

Try

SELECT ORDER_NO, MAX(PROMISE_DT) PROMISE_DT, SUM(REVENUE) REVENUE_SUM, SUM(COST) COST_SUM
FROM OPENORDERS
WHERE [PROMISE_DT] = (SELECT MAX(PROMISE_DT) FROM OPENORDERS)
GROUP BY ORDER_NO

 

by: ksaulPosted on 2007-05-22 at 09:18:57ID: 19135198

If you do want the SUM of cost and revenue your query should work as long as the ORDER_NO is the same.  Is it possible that one ORDER_NO value contains some non visible characters.  Just for testing try:

SELECT ORDER_NO, MAX(PROMISE_DT) , SUM(REVENUE), SUM(COST)
FROM OPENORDERS
WHERE ORDER_NO = 'ORD123'
GROUP BY ORDER_NO

AND

SELECT LTRIM(RTRIM(ORDER_NO)) AS ORDER_NO, MAX(PROMISE_DT) , SUM(REVENUE), SUM(COST)
FROM OPENORDERS
GROUP BY LTRIM(RTRIM(ORDER_NO))



 

by: Roxanne25Posted on 2007-05-22 at 09:45:51ID: 19135427

I get this error message when I try daletian's solution:
Msg 4145, Level 15, State 1, Line 8
An expression of non-boolean type specified in a context where a condition is expected, near 'GROUP'.

And for Ksaul,
The Order number is infact unique and has no hidden values or spaces... even if I substitute '12/31/1900' for the null values in the promise date field, it still does not return the max of the field.  

I'm wondering if Max does not work on certain data typed fields.

 

by: James0628Posted on 2007-05-22 at 21:10:36ID: 19139291

I assume PROMISE_DT is a datetime field.  MAX should work on datetime fields, and I've just been doing some testing here and it seems to be working.  If the dates are all null, I even get null as the max.  I haven't seen any multiple results.

 I don't see anything wrong with the SELECT you posted.

 Based on my tests, replacing the null dates doesn't seem to be necessary, but, FWIW, if I was going to do it, I'd use something like:

SELECT ORDER_NO, MAX(IsNull (PROMISE_DT, CONVERT (datetime, '12/31/1990', 101))), SUM(REVENUE), SUM(COST)
FROM OPENORDERS
GROUP BY ORDER_NO


 FWIW, I don't think you'd want to use daletian's suggestion, because it looks like it's trying to exclude the rows with the other dates and only include the ones with the MAX date.

 James

 

by: Roxanne25Posted on 2007-05-23 at 10:02:18ID: 19143145

I'm not exactly sure what fixed the problem...the query is actually much bigger than what I posted... I only posted what I needed to answer the question.   But I moved the field from near the beginning of the query to the end of the select statement and it works now.

Thanks all for input.

 

by: James0628Posted on 2007-05-23 at 18:04:48ID: 19146126

I understand the impulse to only post what seems to be necessary, but, at the same time, without seeing the actual query, we can only guess.  The most obvious thing would be a field that you left out of your GROUP BY.

 Anway, glad you got it working.

 James

 

by: Roxanne25Posted on 2007-05-23 at 19:21:00ID: 19146535

No... all the fields were in the group by... the query will not work if you do not include a field in a group by when you do aggregates.  All I did was move the position of the field to the end.

 

by: James0628Posted on 2007-05-23 at 20:20:44ID: 19146902

Oops.  I got that backwards.  I meant that you included an extra field in the GROUP BY, not left one out.

 Having it work simply because you moved a field sounds pretty weird, but weird things happen.  :-)

 James

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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