I have a table with two columns(Using oracle 11g database) : Country, IndexNumber. Table contains 10 rows(10 different cities and with its unique index number.)
For example:
Country IndexNUmber
India 1
Australia 2
. .
. .
. .
. .
US 10
Now i want to fetch a random row from above table by generating random number using dbms_random.value(1,10). To achieve that i am using below query:
select * from tab_name where indexnumber = dbms_random.value(1,10);
I am not able to understand the output of this query as some time it is fetching one row, some time zero rows and some time more that one row.
Can someone please make me understand how oracle is evaluating this query.
Thanks
Ankit
Since dbms_random.value is a nondeterministic PL/SQL function, it will be called once for each row evaluated by the query.
The function might return 4 when evaluating the first row, then it might return 8 on the second row, etc.
To compare each row to a single random number, you can turn the function call into a scalar subquery, e.g.:
select * from tab_name where indexnumber = (select dbms_random.value(1,10) from dual);
Since the subquery is not correlated to the main query, Oracle will execute it only once (for the first row returned from the table) and remember the result for all subsequent rows. In particular, if a suitable index is on indexnumber the query will be able to use it more efficiently since it knows it is probing for a single value.
When you run your original query:
select * from tab_name where indexnumber = dbms_random.value(1,10);
it appears that the call to dbms_random is happening for each record's where clause. In other words, there is a chance that every record in your table might be returned if the random number chosen happen to match the index for every record. If you want to retrieve a single random record, then follow this pattern:
select *
from
( select * from tab_name order by DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE )
where rownum < 2;
Related
I have question about "Subquery in Order by clause". The below request returns the error. Is it means that Subquery in Order by clause must be scalar?
select *
from employees
order by (select * from employees where first_name ='Steven' and last_name='King');
Error:
ORA-00913: too many values
00913. 00000 - "too many values"
Yes, it means that if you use a subquery in ORDER BY it must be scalar.
With select * your subquery returns multiple columns and the DBMS would not know which of these to use for the sorting. And if you selected one column only, you would still have to make sure you only select one row of course. (The difference is that Oracle sees the too-many-columns problem immediately, but detect too many rows only when fetching the data.)
This would be allowed:
select * from employees
order by (select birthdate from employees where employee_id = 12345);
This is a scalar query, because it returns only one value (one column, one row). But of course this still makes as little sense as your original query, because the subquery result is independent from the main query, i.e. it returns the same value for every row in the table and thus no sorting takes effect.
A last remark: A subquery in ORDER BY makes very seldomly sense, because that would mean you order by something you don't display. The exception is when looking up a sortkey. E.g.:
select *
from products p
where type = 'shirt' and color = 'blue' and size in ('S', 'M', 'L', 'XL')
order by (select sortkey from sizes s where s.size = p.size);
It means that valid options for ORDER BY clause can be
expression,
position or
column alias
A subquery is neither of these.
I have a scenario where I need to filter out those records in which few NUMBER columns have zero as its value.
Say record 1 contains: c1_amount= 5, c2_amount=-2, c3_amount=-3 and other columns are having zeroes.
Here, the following code fails, as it will filter out the records which is not exactly what I want because 3 columns has non zero values but after sum resulting zero.
Select * from table where
( C1_amount+
C2_amount+
.
.
.
C50_amount) <>0;
I am little concerned about performance. That is the reason why I neither want to use abs() on all 50 column nor check every column <> 0.
Try to select like
SELECT * FROM Table WHERE
decode(c1_amount,0,0,1)+decode(c2_amount,0,0,1)+..
..+decode(c50_amount,0,0,1)>0
or use ALL
SELECT * FROM Table WHERE
0!=ANY(c1_amount,...,c50_amount)
let's assume I have a table tab1 in my Oracle DB 12.1, which has a column record_id (type NUMBER) and many other columns, among them a column named exchg_id.
This record_id is always empty when a batch of new rows gets inserted into the table. What I need to do is to populate the record_id with values 1..N for all rows that satisfy a condition ...WHERE EXCHG_ID = 'something' and number of such rows is N. Of course I know how to do this procedurally (in a for-loop), but I'd like to know if there's an faster way using a single UPDATE statement. I imagine something like this:
UPDATE tab1 SET record_id = {1..N} WHERE exchg_id = 'something';
Many thanks for your help!
UPDATE: the order of the rows is not important, I need no specific ordering. I just need unique record_id's 1..N for any given exchg_id.
You could use rownum to set record_id to 1 to N :
UPDATE tab1 SET record_id = rownum WHERE exchg_id = 'something';
If you have some offset, say 10, then use rownum + 10
I need to select rows randomly from an Oracle DB.
Ex: Assume a table with 100 rows, how I can randomly return 20 of those records from the entire 100 rows.
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT *
FROM table
ORDER BY DBMS_RANDOM.RANDOM)
WHERE rownum < 21;
SAMPLE() is not guaranteed to give you exactly 20 rows, but might be suitable (and may perform significantly better than a full query + sort-by-random for large tables):
SELECT *
FROM table SAMPLE(20);
Note: the 20 here is an approximate percentage, not the number of rows desired. In this case, since you have 100 rows, to get approximately 20 rows you ask for a 20% sample.
SELECT * FROM table SAMPLE(10) WHERE ROWNUM <= 20;
This is more efficient as it doesn't need to sort the Table.
SELECT column FROM
( SELECT column, dbms_random.value FROM table ORDER BY 2 )
where rownum <= 20;
In summary, two ways were introduced
1) using order by DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE clause
2) using sample([%]) function
The first way has advantage in 'CORRECTNESS' which means you will never fail get result if it actually exists, while in the second way you may get no result even though it has cases satisfying the query condition since information is reduced during sampling.
The second way has advantage in 'EFFICIENT' which mean you will get result faster and give light load to your database.
I was given an warning from DBA that my query using the first way gives loads to the database
You can choose one of two ways according to your interest!
In case of huge tables standard way with sorting by dbms_random.value is not effective because you need to scan whole table and dbms_random.value is pretty slow function and requires context switches. For such cases, there are 3 additional methods:
1: Use sample clause:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/19/sqlrf/SELECT.html#GUID-CFA006CA-6FF1-4972-821E-6996142A51C6
https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/19/sqlrf/SELECT.html#GUID-CFA006CA-6FF1-4972-821E-6996142A51C6
for example:
select *
from s1 sample block(1)
order by dbms_random.value
fetch first 1 rows only
ie get 1% of all blocks, then sort them randomly and return just 1 row.
2: if you have an index/primary key on the column with normal distribution, you can get min and max values, get random value in this range and get first row with a value greater or equal than that randomly generated value.
Example:
--big table with 1 mln rows with primary key on ID with normal distribution:
Create table s1(id primary key,padding) as
select level, rpad('x',100,'x')
from dual
connect by level<=1e6;
select *
from s1
where id>=(select
dbms_random.value(
(select min(id) from s1),
(select max(id) from s1)
)
from dual)
order by id
fetch first 1 rows only;
3: get random table block, generate rowid and get row from the table by this rowid:
select *
from s1
where rowid = (
select
DBMS_ROWID.ROWID_CREATE (
1,
objd,
file#,
block#,
1)
from
(
select/*+ rule */ file#,block#,objd
from v$bh b
where b.objd in (select o.data_object_id from user_objects o where object_name='S1' /* table_name */)
order by dbms_random.value
fetch first 1 rows only
)
);
To randomly select 20 rows I think you'd be better off selecting the lot of them randomly ordered and selecting the first 20 of that set.
Something like:
Select *
from (select *
from table
order by dbms_random.value) -- you can also use DBMS_RANDOM.RANDOM
where rownum < 21;
Best used for small tables to avoid selecting large chunks of data only to discard most of it.
Here's how to pick a random sample out of each group:
SELECT GROUPING_COLUMN,
MIN (COLUMN_NAME) KEEP (DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE)
AS RANDOM_SAMPLE
FROM TABLE_NAME
GROUP BY GROUPING_COLUMN
ORDER BY GROUPING_COLUMN;
I'm not sure how efficient it is, but if you have a lot of categories and sub-categories, this seems to do the job nicely.
-- Q. How to find Random 50% records from table ?
when we want percent wise randomly data
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY DBMS_RANDOM.RANDOM)
WHERE rownum <= (select count(*) from table_name) * 50/100;
I think I could use some help here from more experienced users...
I have an integer field name in a table, let's call it SO_ID in a table SO, and to each new row I need to calculate a new SO_ID based on the following rules
1) SO_ID consists of 6 letters where first 3 are an area code, and the last three is the sequenced number within this area.
309001
309002
309003
2) so the next new row will have a SO_ID of value
309004
3) if someone deletes the row with SO_ID value = 309002, then the next new row must recycle this value, so the next new row has got to have the SO_ID of value
309002
can anyone please provide me with either a SQL function or PL/SQL (perhaps a trigger straightaway?) function that would return the next available SO_ID I need to use ?
I reckon I could get use of keyword rownum in my sql, but the follwoing just doens't work properly
select max(so_id),max(rownum) from(
select (so_id),rownum,cast(substr(cast(so_id as varchar(6)),4,3) as int) from SO
where length(so_id)=6
and substr(cast(so_id as varchar(6)),1,3)='309'
and cast(substr(cast(so_id as varchar(6)),4,3) as int)=rownum
order by so_id
);
thank you for all your help!
This kind of logic is fraught with peril. What if two sessions calculate the same "next" value, or both try to reuse the same "deleted" value? Since your column is an integer, you'd probably be better off querying "between 309001 and 309999", but that begs the question of what happens when you hit the thousandth item in area 309?
Is it possible to make SO_ID a foreign key to another table as well as a unique key? You could pre-populate the parent table with all valid IDs (or use a function to generate them as needed), and then it would be a simple matter to select the lowest one where a child record doesn't exist.
well, we came up with this... sort of works.. concurrency is 'solved' via unique constraint
select min(lastnumber)
from
(
select so_id,so_id-LAG(so_id, 1, so_id) OVER (ORDER BY so_id) AS diff,LAG(so_id, 1, so_id) OVER (ORDER BY so_id)as lastnumber
from so_miso
where substr(cast(so_id as varchar(6)),1,3)='309'
and length(so_id)=6
order by so_id
)a
where diff>1;
Do you really need to compute & store this value at the time a row is inserted? You would normally be better off storing the area code and a date in a table and computing the SO_ID in a view, i.e.
SELECT area_code ||
LPAD( DENSE_RANK() OVER( PARTITION BY area_code
ORDER BY date_column ),
3,
'0' ) AS so_id,
<<other columns>>
FROM your_table
or having a process that runs periodically (nightly, for example) to assign the SO_ID using similar logic.
If your application is not pure sql, you could do this in application code (ie: Java code). This would be more straightforward.
If you are recycling numbers when rows are deleted, your base table must be consulted when generating the next number. "Legacy" pre-relational schemes that attempt to encode information in numbers are a pain to make airtight when numbers must be recycled after deletes, as you say yours must.
If you want to avoid having to scan your table looking for gaps, an after-delete routine must write the deleted number to a separate table in a "ReuseMe" column. The insert routine does this:
begins trans
selects next-number table for update
uses a reuseme number if available else uses the next number
clears the reuseme number if applicable or increments the next-number in the next-number table
commits trans
Ignoring the issues about concurrency, the following should give a decent start.
If 'traffic' on the table is low enough, go with locking the table in exclusive mode for the duration of the transaction.
create table blah (soc_id number(6));
insert into blah select 309000 + rownum from user_tables;
delete from blah where soc_id = 309003;
commit;
create or replace function get_next (i_soc in number) return number is
v_min number := i_soc* 1000;
v_max number := v_min + 999;
begin
lock table blah in exclusive mode;
select min(rn) into v_min
from
(select rownum rn from dual connect by level <= 999
minus
select to_number(substr(soc_id,4))
from blah
where soc_id between v_min and v_max);
return v_min;
end;