GROUP BY without aggregate function

Question

I am trying to understand GROUP BY  new to oracle dbms  without aggregate function  How does it operate  Here is what i have tried  EMP table on which i will run my SQL   SELECT ename   sal FROM emp GROUP BY ename   sal   SELECT ename   sal   FROM emp   GROUP BY ename      Result ORA-00979  not a GROUP BY expression 00979  00000 -   quot not a GROUP BY expression quot   Cause   Action  Error at Line  397 Column  16  SELECT ename   sal   FROM emp   GROUP BY sal      Result ORA-00979  not a GROUP BY expression 00979  00000 -   quot not a GROUP BY expression quot   Cause   Action  Error at Line  411 Column  8  SELECT empno   ename   sal   FROM emp   GROUP BY sal   ename      Result ORA-00979  not a GROUP BY expression 00979  00000 -   quot not a GROUP BY expression quot   Cause   Action  Error at Line  425 Column  8  SELECT empno   ename   sal   FROM emp   GROUP BY empno   ename   sal      So  basically the number of columns have to be equal to the number of columns in the GROUP BY clause  but i still do not understand why or what is going on

User · Answer

As an addition

basically the number of columns have to be equal to the number of columns in the GROUP BY clause

is not a correct statement.

Any attribute which is not a part of GROUP BY clause can not be used for selection
Any attribute which is a part of GROUP BY clause can be used for selection but not mandatory.

User · Answer

You re experiencing a strict requirement of the GROUP BY clause  Every column not in the group-by clause must have a function applied to reduce all records for the matching  group  to a single record  sum  max  min  etc    If you list all queried  selected  columns in the GROUP BY clause  you are essentially requesting that duplicate records be excluded from the result set  That gives the same effect as SELECT DISTINCT which also eliminates duplicate rows from the result set

User · Answer

That s how GROUP BY works  It takes several rows and turns them into one row  Because of this  it has to know what to do with all the combined rows where there have different values for some columns  fields   This is why you have two options for every field you want to SELECT   Either include it in the GROUP BY clause  or use it in an aggregate function so the system knows how you want to combine the field   For example  let s say you have this table   Name   OrderNumber ------------------ John   1 John   2   If you say GROUP BY Name  how will it know which OrderNumber to show in the result  So you either include OrderNumber in group by  which will result in these two rows  Or  you use an aggregate function to show how to handle the OrderNumbers  For example  MAX OrderNumber   which means the result is John   2 or SUM OrderNumber  which means the result is John   3

User · Answer

If you have some column in SELECT clause   how will it select it if there is several rows   so yes   every column in SELECT clause should be in GROUP BY clause also   you can use aggregate functions in SELECT       you can have column in GROUP BY clause which is not in SELECT clause   but not otherwise

User · Answer

Let me give some examples   Consider this data   CREATE TABLE DATASET   VAL1 CHAR   1 CHAR                       VAL2 VARCHAR2   10 CHAR                       VAL3 NUMBER     INSERT INTO       DATASET   VAL1  VAL2  VAL3   VALUES          b    b-details   2     INSERT INTO       DATASET   VAL1  VAL2  VAL3   VALUES          a    a-details   1     INSERT INTO       DATASET   VAL1  VAL2  VAL3   VALUES          c    c-details   3     INSERT INTO       DATASET   VAL1  VAL2  VAL3   VALUES          a    dup   4     INSERT INTO       DATASET   VAL1  VAL2  VAL3   VALUES          c    c-details   5     COMMIT    Whats there in table now  SELECT   FROM DATASET   VAL1 VAL2             VAL3 ---- ---------- ---------- b    b-details           2 a    a-details           1 c    c-details           3 a    dup                 4 c    c-details           5  5 rows selected    --aggregate with group by  SELECT       VAL1        COUNT       FROM       DATASET A GROUP BY       VAL1   VAL1   COUNT    ---- ---------- b             1 a             2 c             2  3 rows selected    --aggregate with group by multiple columns but select partial column  SELECT       VAL1        COUNT       FROM       DATASET A GROUP BY       VAL1        VAL2   VAL1   ----  b              c              a              a               4 rows selected    --No aggregate with group by multiple columns  SELECT       VAL1        VAL2 FROM       DATASET A GROUP BY       VAL1        VAL2       VAL1       ----      b    b-details     c    c-details     a    dup     a    a-details      4 rows selected    --No aggregate with group by multiple columns  SELECT       VAL1 FROM       DATASET A GROUP BY       VAL1        VAL2       VAL1       ----      b     c     a     a      4 rows selected    You have N columns in select  excluding aggregations   then you should have N or N x columns

User · Answer

Given this data  Col1  Col2  Col3  A     X     1  A     Y     2  A     Y     3  B     X     0  B     Y     3  B     Z     1  This query  SELECT Col1  Col2  Col3 FROM data GROUP BY Col1  Col2  Col3  Would result in exactly the same table  However  this query  SELECT Col1  Col2 FROM data GROUP BY Col1  Col2  Would result in  Col1  Col2  A     X    A     Y    B     X    B     Y    B     Z    Now  a query  SELECT Col1  Col2  Col3 FROM data GROUP BY Col1  Col2  Would create a problem  the line with A  Y is the result of grouping the two lines  A     Y     2  A     Y     3  So  which value should be in Col3   2  or  3   Normally you would use a GROUP BY to calculate e g  a sum  SELECT Col1  Col2  SUM Col3  FROM data GROUP BY Col1  Col2  So in the line  we had a problem with we now get  2 3    5  Grouping by all your columns in your select is effectively the same as using DISTINCT  and it is preferable to use the DISTINCT keyword word readability in this case  So instead of SELECT Col1  Col2  Col3 FROM data GROUP BY Col1  Col2  Col3  use SELECT DISTINCT Col1  Col2  Col3 FROM data

User · Answer

I know you said you want to understand group by if you have data like this   COL-A  COL-B  COL-C  COL-D   1      Ac      C1     D1   2      Bd      C2     D2   3      Ba      C1     D3   4      Ab      C1     D4   5      C       C2     D5   And you want to make the data appear like   COL-A  COL-B  COL-C  COL-D   4      Ab      C1     D4   1      Ac      C1     D1   3      Ba      C1     D3   2      Bd      C2     D2   5      C       C2     D5   You use   select   from table name order by col-c colb   Because I think this is what you intend to do

User · Answer

The only real use case for GROUP BY without aggregation is when you GROUP BY more columns than are selected  in which case the selected columns might be repeated  Otherwise you might as well use a DISTINCT   It s worth noting that other RDBMS s do not require that all non-aggregated columns be included in the GROUP BY  For example in PostgreSQL if the primary key columns of a table are included in the GROUP BY then other columns of that table need not be as they are guaranteed to be distinct for every distinct primary key column  I ve wished in the past that Oracle did the same as it would have made for more compact SQL in many cases

User · Answer

Use sub query e g    SELECT field1 field2  SELECT distinct field3 FROM tbl2 WHERE criteria  AS field3 FROM tbl1 GROUP BY field1 field2   OR  SELECT DISTINCT field1 field2  SELECT distinct field3 FROM tbl2 WHERE criteria  AS field3 FROM tbl1

[sql] GROUP BY without aggregate function

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