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MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual :: 12 SQL Statement Syntax :: 12.2 Data Manipulation
Statements :: 12.2.8 SELECT Syntax
« 12.2.7 REPLACE Syntax
12.2.8.1 JOIN Syntax »
Section Navigation [Toggle]

• 12.2 Data Manipulation Statements

• 12.2.1 CALL Syntax
• 12.2.2 DELETE Syntax
• 12.2.3 DO Syntax
• 12.2.4 HANDLER Syntax
• 12.2.5 INSERT Syntax
• 12.2.6 LOAD DATA INFILE Syntax
• 12.2.7 REPLACE Syntax
• 12.2.8 SELECT Syntax
o 12.2.8.1 JOIN Syntax
o 12.2.8.2 Index Hint Syntax
o 12.2.8.3 UNION Syntax
• 12.2.9 Subquery Syntax
• 12.2.10 TRUNCATE Syntax
• 12.2.11 UPDATE Syntax

12.2.8. SELECT Syntax
[+/-]

12.2.8.1. JOIN Syntax

12.2.8.2. Index Hint Syntax
12.2.8.3. UNION Syntax
SELECT
[ALL | DISTINCT | DISTINCTROW ]
[HIGH_PRIORITY]
[STRAIGHT_JOIN]
[SQL_SMALL_RESULT] [SQL_BIG_RESULT] [SQL_BUFFER_RESULT]
[SQL_CACHE | SQL_NO_CACHE] [SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS]
 select_expr [, select_expr ...]
[FROM table_references
[WHERE where_condition]
[GROUP BY {col_name | expr | position}
[ASC | DESC], ... [WITH ROLLUP]]
[HAVING where_condition]
[ORDER BY {col_name | expr | position}
[ASC | DESC], ...]
[LIMIT {[offset,] row_count | row_count OFFSET offset}]
[PROCEDURE procedure_name(argument_list)]
[INTO OUTFILE 'file_name' export_options
| INTO DUMPFILE 'file_name'
| INTO var_name [, var_name]]
[FOR UPDATE | LOCK IN SHARE MODE]]

SELECT is used to retrieve rows selected from one or more tables, and can include UNION
statements and subqueries. See Section 12.2.8.3, “UNION Syntax”, and Section 12.2.9,
“Subquery Syntax”.

The most commonly used clauses of SELECT statements are these:

• Each select_expr indicates a column that you want to retrieve. There must be at least
one select_expr.
• table_references indicates the table or tables from which to retrieve rows. Its syntax
is described in Section 12.2.8.1, “JOIN Syntax”.
• The WHERE clause, if given, indicates the condition or conditions that rows must satisfy to
be selected. where_condition is an expression that evaluates to true for each row to
be selected. The statement selects all rows if there is no WHERE clause.

In the WHERE clause, you can use any of the functions and operators that MySQL
supports, except for aggregate (summary) functions. See Chapter 11, Functions and
Operators.

SELECT can also be used to retrieve rows computed without reference to any table.

For example:

mysql> SELECT 1 + 1;
-> 2

You are allowed to specify DUAL as a dummy table name in situations where no tables are
referenced:

mysql> SELECT 1 + 1 FROM DUAL;

-> 2

DUAL is purely for the convenience of people who require that all SELECT statements should
have FROM and possibly other clauses. MySQL may ignore the clauses. MySQL does not
require FROM DUAL if no tables are referenced.
In general, clauses used must be given in exactly the order shown in the syntax description. For
example, a HAVING clause must come after any GROUP BY clause and before any ORDER BY
clause. The exception is that the INTO clause can appear either as shown in the syntax
description or immediately following the select_expr list.

The list of select_expr terms comprises the select list that indicates which columns to
retrieve. Terms specify a column or expression or can use *-shorthand:

• A select list consisting only of a single unqualified * can be used as shorthand to select
all columns from all tables:
• SELECT * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ...
• tbl_name.* can be used as a qualified shorthand to select all columns from the named
table:
• SELECT t1.*, t2.* FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ...
• Use of an unqualified * with other items in the select list may produce a parse error. To
avoid this problem, use a qualified tbl_name.* reference
• SELECT AVG(score), t1.* FROM t1 ...

The following list provides additional information about other SELECT clauses:

• A select_expr can be given an alias using AS alias_name. The alias is used as the
expression's column name and can be used in GROUP BY, ORDER BY, or HAVING
clauses. For example:
• SELECT CONCAT(last_name,', ',first_name) AS full_name
• FROM mytable ORDER BY full_name;

The AS keyword is optional when aliasing a select_expr. The preceding example

could have been written like this:

SELECT CONCAT(last_name,', ',first_name) full_name

FROM mytable ORDER BY full_name;

However, because the AS is optional, a subtle problem can occur if you forget the
comma between two select_expr expressions: MySQL interprets the second as an
alias name. For example, in the following statement, columnb is treated as an alias
name:

SELECT columna columnb FROM mytable;

For this reason, it is good practice to be in the habit of using AS explicitly when
specifying column aliases.

It is not allowable to refer to a column alias in a WHERE clause, because the column
value might not yet be determined when the WHERE clause is executed. See
Section B.1.5.4, “Problems with Column Aliases”.

• The FROM table_references clause indicates the table or tables from which to retrieve
rows. If you name more than one table, you are performing a join. For information on join
 syntax, see Section 12.2.8.1, “JOIN Syntax”. For each table specified, you can optionally
specify an alias.
• tbl_name [[AS] alias] [index_hint]

The use of index hints provides the optimizer with information about how to choose
indexes during query processing. For a description of the syntax for specifying these
hints, see Section 12.2.8.2, “Index Hint Syntax”.

You can use SET max_seeks_for_key=value as an alternative way to force MySQL to

prefer key scans instead of table scans. See Section 5.1.3, “Server System Variables”.

• You can refer to a table within the default database as tbl_name, or as

db_name.tbl_name to specify a database explicitly. You can refer to a column as
col_name, tbl_name.col_name, or db_name.tbl_name.col_name. You need not
specify a tbl_name or db_name.tbl_name prefix for a column reference unless the
reference would be ambiguous. See Section 8.2.1, “Identifier Qualifiers”, for examples of
ambiguity that require the more explicit column reference forms.
• A table reference can be aliased using tbl_name AS alias_name or tbl_name
alias_name:
• SELECT t1.name, t2.salary FROM employee AS t1, info AS t2
• WHERE t1.name = t2.name;
•
• SELECT t1.name, t2.salary FROM employee t1, info t2
• WHERE t1.name = t2.name;
• Columns selected for output can be referred to in ORDER BY and GROUP BY clauses
using column names, column aliases, or column positions. Column positions are
integers and begin with 1:
• SELECT college, region, seed FROM tournament
• ORDER BY region, seed;
•
• SELECT college, region AS r, seed AS s FROM tournament
• ORDER BY r, s;
•
• SELECT college, region, seed FROM tournament
• ORDER BY 2, 3;

To sort in reverse order, add the DESC (descending) keyword to the name of the column
in the ORDER BY clause that you are sorting by. The default is ascending order; this can
be specified explicitly using the ASC keyword.

If ORDER BY occurs within a subquery and also is applied in the outer query, the
outermost ORDER BY takes precedence. For example, results for the following statement
are sorted in descending order, not ascending order:

(SELECT ... ORDER BY a) ORDER BY a DESC;

Use of column positions is deprecated because the syntax has been removed from the
SQL standard.
• If you use GROUP BY, output rows are sorted according to the GROUP BY columns as if
you had an ORDER BY for the same columns. To avoid the overhead of sorting that
GROUP BY produces, add ORDER BY NULL:
• SELECT a, COUNT(b) FROM test_table GROUP BY a ORDER BY NULL;
• MySQL extends the GROUP BY clause so that you can also specify ASC and DESC after
columns named in the clause:
• SELECT a, COUNT(b) FROM test_table GROUP BY a DESC;
• MySQL extends the use of GROUP BY to allow selecting fields that are not mentioned in
the GROUP BY clause. If you are not getting the results that you expect from your query,
please read the description of GROUP BY found in Section 11.11, “Functions and
Modifiers for Use with GROUP BY Clauses”.
• GROUP BY allows a WITH ROLLUP modifier. See Section 11.11.2, “GROUP BY Modifiers”.
• The HAVING clause is applied nearly last, just before items are sent to the client, with no
optimization. (LIMIT is applied after HAVING.)

A HAVING clause can refer to any column or alias named in a select_expr in the
SELECT list or in outer subqueries, and to aggregate functions. However, the SQL
standard requires that HAVING must reference only columns in the GROUP BY clause or
columns used in aggregate functions. To accommodate both standard SQL and the
MySQL-specific behavior of being able to refer columns in the SELECT list, MySQL 5.0.2
and up allows HAVING to refer to columns in the SELECT list, columns in the GROUP BY
clause, columns in outer subqueries, and to aggregate functions.

For example, the following statement works in MySQL 5.0.2 but produces an error for
earlier versions:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t GROUP BY col1 HAVING col1 = 2;

If the HAVING clause refers to a column that is ambiguous, a warning occurs. In the
following statement, col2 is ambiguous because it is used as both an alias and a
column name:

SELECT COUNT(col1) AS col2 FROM t GROUP BY col2 HAVING col2 = 2;

Preference is given to standard SQL behavior, so if a HAVING column name is used both
in GROUP BY and as an aliased column in the output column list, preference is given to
the column in the GROUP BY column.

• Do not use HAVING for items that should be in the WHERE clause. For example, do not
write the following:
• SELECT col_name FROM tbl_name HAVING col_name > 0;

Write this instead:

SELECT col_name FROM tbl_name WHERE col_name > 0;

• The HAVING clause can refer to aggregate functions, which the WHERE clause cannot:
• SELECT user, MAX(salary) FROM users
• GROUP BY user HAVING MAX(salary) > 10;

(This did not work in some older versions of MySQL.)

• MySQL allows duplicate column names. That is, there can be more than one
select_expr with the same name. This is an extension to standard SQL. Because
MySQL also allows GROUP BY and HAVING to refer to select_expr values, this can
result in an ambiguity:
• SELECT 12 AS a, a FROM t GROUP BY a;

In that statement, both columns have the name a. To ensure that the correct column is
used for grouping, use different names for each select_expr.

• MySQL resolves unqualified column or alias references in ORDER BY clauses by

searching in the select_expr values, then in the columns of the tables in the FROM
clause. For GROUP BY or HAVING clauses, it searches the FROM clause before searching
in the select_expr values. (For GROUP BY and HAVING, this differs from the pre-
MySQL 5.0 behavior that used the same rules as for ORDER BY.)
• The LIMIT clause can be used to constrain the number of rows returned by the SELECT
statement. LIMIT takes one or two numeric arguments, which must both be nonnegative
integer constants (except when using prepared statements).

With two arguments, the first argument specifies the offset of the first row to return, and
the second specifies the maximum number of rows to return. The offset of the initial row
is 0 (not 1):

SELECT * FROM tbl LIMIT 5,10; # Retrieve rows 6-15

To retrieve all rows from a certain offset up to the end of the result set, you can use
some large number for the second parameter. This statement retrieves all rows from the
96th row to the last:

SELECT * FROM tbl LIMIT 95,18446744073709551615;

With one argument, the value specifies the number of rows to return from the beginning
of the result set:

SELECT * FROM tbl LIMIT 5; # Retrieve first 5 rows

In other words, LIMIT row_count is equivalent to LIMIT 0, row_count.

For prepared statements, you can use placeholders (supported as of MySQL version
5.0.7). The following statements will return one row from the tbl table:

SET @a=1;
PREPARE STMT FROM 'SELECT * FROM tbl LIMIT ?';
EXECUTE STMT USING @a;

The following statements will return the second to sixth row from the tbl table:
 SET @skip=1; SET @numrows=5;
PREPARE STMT FROM 'SELECT * FROM tbl LIMIT ?, ?';
EXECUTE STMT USING @skip, @numrows;

For compatibility with PostgreSQL, MySQL also supports the LIMIT row_count
OFFSET offset syntax.

If LIMIT occurs within a subquery and also is applied in the outer query, the outermost
LIMIT takes precedence. For example, the following statement produces two rows, not
one:

(SELECT ... LIMIT 1) LIMIT 2;

• A PROCEDURE clause names a procedure that should process the data in the result set.
For an example, see Section 21.3.1, “PROCEDURE ANALYSE”.
• The SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE 'file_name' form of SELECT writes the selected
rows to a file. The file is created on the server host, so you must have the FILE privilege
to use this syntax. file_name cannot be an existing file, which among other things
prevents files such as /etc/passwd and database tables from being destroyed. As of
MySQL 5.0.19, the character_set_filesystem system variable controls the
interpretation of the file name.

The SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE statement is intended primarily to let you very quickly
dump a table to a text file on the server machine. If you want to create the resulting file
on some client host other than the server host, you cannot use SELECT ... INTO
OUTFILE. In that case, you should instead use a command such as mysql -e "SELECT
..." > file_name to generate the file on the client host.

SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE is the complement of LOAD DATA INFILE; the syntax for
the export_options part of the statement consists of the same FIELDS and LINES
clauses that are used with the LOAD DATA INFILE statement. See Section 12.2.6,
“LOAD DATA INFILE Syntax”.

Column values are dumped using the binary character set. In effect, there is no
character set conversion. If a table contains columns in several character sets, the
output data file will as well and you may not be able to reload the file correctly.

FIELDS ESCAPED BY controls how to write special characters. If the FIELDS ESCAPED
BY character is not empty, it is used as a prefix that precedes following characters on
output:

The FIELDS ESCAPED BY character

The FIELDS [OPTIONALLY] ENCLOSED BY character
The first character of the FIELDS TERMINATED BY and LINES TERMINATED BY
values
ASCII NUL (the zero-valued byte; what is actually written following the escape
character is ASCII “0”, not a zero-valued byte)
The FIELDS TERMINATED BY, ENCLOSED BY, ESCAPED BY, or LINES TERMINATED BY
characters must be escaped so that you can read the file back in reliably. ASCII NUL is
escaped to make it easier to view with some pagers.

The resulting file does not have to conform to SQL syntax, so nothing else need be
escaped.

If the FIELDS ESCAPED BY character is empty, no characters are escaped and NULL is
output as NULL, not \N. It is probably not a good idea to specify an empty escape
character, particularly if field values in your data contain any of the characters in the list
just given.

Here is an example that produces a file in the comma-separated values (CSV) format
used by many programs:

SELECT a,b,a+b INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/result.txt'

FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
FROM test_table;

 If you use INTO DUMPFILE instead of INTO OUTFILE, MySQL writes only one
row into the file, without any column or line termination and without performing
any escape processing. This is useful if you want to store a BLOB value in a file.
 Note

Any file created by INTO OUTFILE or INTO DUMPFILE is writable by all users on
the server host. The reason for this is that the MySQL server cannot create a file
that is owned by anyone other than the user under whose account it is running.
(You should never run mysqld as root for this and other reasons.) The file thus
must be world-writable so that you can manipulate its contents.

If the secure_file_priv system variable is set to a nonempty directory name,

the file to be written must be located in that directory.

 The INTO clause can name a list of one or more variables, which can be user-
defined variables, or parameters or local variables within a stored function or
procedure body (see Section 12.8.3.3, “SELECT ... INTO Statement”). The
selected values are assigned to the variables. The number of variables must
match the number of columns. The query should return a single row. If the query
returns no rows, a warning with error code 1329 occurs (No data), and the
variable values remain unchanged. If the query returns multiple rows, error 1172
occurs (Result consisted of more than one row). If it is possible that the
statement may retrieve multiple rows, you can use LIMIT 1 to limit the result set
to a single row.
 The SELECT syntax description at the beginning this section shows the INTO
clause near the end of the statement. It is also possible to use INTO immediately
following the select_expr list.
 An INTO clause should not be used in a nested SELECT because such a SELECT
must return its result to the outer context.
  If you use FOR UPDATE with a storage engine that uses page or row locks, rows
examined by the query are write-locked until the end of the current transaction.
Using LOCK IN SHARE MODE sets a shared lock that allows other transactions to
read the examined rows but not to update or delete them. See Section 13.2.8.3,
“SELECT ... FOR UPDATE and SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE Locking
Reads”.

Following the SELECT keyword, you can use a number of options that affect the operation of the
statement.

The ALL, DISTINCT, and DISTINCTROW options specify whether duplicate rows should be
returned. If none of these options are given, the default is ALL (all matching rows are returned).
DISTINCT and DISTINCTROW are synonyms and specify removal of duplicate rows from the
result set.

HIGH_PRIORITY, STRAIGHT_JOIN, and options beginning with SQL_ are MySQL extensions to
standard SQL.

• HIGH_PRIORITY gives the SELECT higher priority than a statement that updates a table.
You should use this only for queries that are very fast and must be done at once. A
SELECT HIGH_PRIORITY query that is issued while the table is locked for reading runs
even if there is an update statement waiting for the table to be free. This affects only
storage engines that use only table-level locking (MyISAM, MEMORY, MERGE).

HIGH_PRIORITY cannot be used with SELECT statements that are part of a UNION.

• STRAIGHT_JOIN forces the optimizer to join the tables in the order in which they are
listed in the FROM clause. You can use this to speed up a query if the optimizer joins the
tables in nonoptimal order. STRAIGHT_JOIN also can be used in the
table_references list. See Section 12.2.8.1, “JOIN Syntax”.

STRAIGHT_JOIN does not apply to any table that the optimizer treats as a const or
system table. Such a table produces a single row, is read during the optimization phase
of query execution, and references to its columns are replaced with the appropriate
column values before query execution proceeds. These tables will appear first in the
query plan displayed by EXPLAIN. See Section 7.2.1, “Optimizing Queries with
EXPLAIN”. This exception may not apply to const or system tables that are used on the
NULL-complemented side of an outer join (that is, the right-side table of a LEFT JOIN or
the left-side table of a RIGHT JOIN.

• SQL_BIG_RESULT can be used with GROUP BY or DISTINCT to tell the optimizer that the
result set has many rows. In this case, MySQL directly uses disk-based temporary tables
if needed, and prefers sorting to using a temporary table with a key on the GROUP BY
elements.
• SQL_BUFFER_RESULT forces the result to be put into a temporary table. This helps
MySQL free the table locks early and helps in cases where it takes a long time to send
the result set to the client. This option can be used only for top-level SELECT statements,
not for subqueries or following UNION.
 • SQL_SMALL_RESULT can be used with GROUP BY or DISTINCT to tell the optimizer that
the result set is small. In this case, MySQL uses fast temporary tables to store the
resulting table instead of using sorting. This should not normally be needed.
• SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS tells MySQL to calculate how many rows there would be in the
result set, disregarding any LIMIT clause. The number of rows can then be retrieved
with SELECT FOUND_ROWS(). See Section 11.10.3, “Information Functions”.
• The SQL_CACHE and SQL_NO_CACHE options affect caching of query results in the query
cache (see Section 7.5.5, “The MySQL Query Cache”). SQL_CACHE tells MySQL to store
the result in the query cache if it is cacheable and the value of the query_cache_type
system variable is 2 or DEMAND. SQL_NO_CACHE tells MySQL not to store the result in the
query cache. For a query that uses UNION, subqueries, or views, the following rules
apply:

SQL_NO_CACHE applies if it appears in any SELECT in the query.

For a cacheable query, SQL_CACHE applies if it appears in the first SELECT of the
query, or in the first SELECT of a view referred to by the query.

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User Comments
Posted by Colin Nelson on February 26 2003 12:10am [Delete] [Edit]

You can simulate a CROSSTAB by the following method:-

Use IF function to select the key value of the sub table as in:

SELECT
SUM(IF(beta_idx=1, beta_value,0)) as beta1_value,
SUM(IF(beta_idx=2, beta_value,0)) as beta2_value,
SUM(IF(beta_idx=3, beta_value,0)) as beta3_value
FROM alpha JOIN beta WHERE alpha_id = beta_alpha_id;

where alpha table has the form alpha_id, alpha_blah, alpha_blah_blah

and beta table has the form beta_alpha_id, beta_other stuff,
beta_idx, beta_value

This will create 3 columns with totals of beta values according to their idx field

Posted by Corin Langosch on March 29 2003 1:49am [Delete] [Edit]

when selecting a single random row you have to use a query like this: SELECT ... FROM
my_table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1.
as explain shows, mysql optimizes this VERY badly (or may be better said, doens't optimize it at
all): it uses an temporary table and an extra filesort.
couldn't this be optimized?!
if not, may be add a syntax like SELECT RANDOM_ROW .... FROM my_table ...

Posted by David Phillips on April 2 2003 7:15am [Delete] [Edit]

This method of selecting a random row should be fast:

LOCK TABLES foo READ;

SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * COUNT(*)) AS rand_row FROM foo;
SELECT * FROM foo LIMIT $rand_row, 1;
UNLOCK TABLES;

Unfortunately, variables cannot be used in the LIMIT clause, otherwise the entire thing could be
done completely in SQL.

Posted by [name withheld] on August 20 2003 10:55pm [Delete] [Edit]

In reply to David Philips:

If your tables are not all that big, a simpler method is:
SELECT * FROM foo ORDER BY RAND(NOW()) LIMIT 1;

If it's a big table, your method will almost certainly be faster.

Posted by Count Henry De Havilland­Fortesque­Smedley on January 13  [Delete] [Edit]
2004 5:41am

If you want to find duplicates on a field that hasn't been uniquely indexed, you can do this:

SELECT BookISBN, count(BookISBN) FROM Books GROUP BY BookISBN HAVING

COUNT(BookISBN)>1;

Posted by Count Henry De Havilland­Fortesque­Smedley on January 13  [Delete] [Edit]
2004 5:59am

Sometimes you want to retrieve the records that DONT match a select statement.

Consider this select:

SELECT CarIndex FROM DealerCatalog, BigCatalog WHERE
DealerCatalog.CarIndex=BigCatalog.CarIndex
This finds all the CarIndex values in the Dealer's catalog that are in the bigger distributor catalog.

How do I then find the dealer CarIndex values that ARE NOT in the bigger catalog?

The answer is to use LEFT JOIN - anything that doesn't join is given a NULL value , so we look
for that:

SELECT CarIndex FROM DealerCatalog LEFT JOIN BigCatalog ON

DealerCatalog.CarIndex=BigCatalog.CarIndex WHERE BigCatalog.CarIndex IS NULL

Posted by Johann Eckert on February 11 2004 12:14pm [Delete] [Edit]

To find double entries in a table:

SELECT db1.*
FROM tbl_data db1, tbl_data k2
WHERE db1.id <> db2.id
AND db1.name = db2.name

db1.id must be the PK

db1.name must be the fields that should be verified as double entries.

(I'm not sure wether the code is correct but in my case it works)

Johann

Posted by [name withheld] on March 2 2004 6:10am [Delete] [Edit]

In order to anti-match fields by wildcards, one has to check whether the value of the field is not
NULL:

For example: The table 'runs' contains 34876 rows. 205 rows have an 'info' field containing the
string 'wrong'.

To select those rows for which the 'info' column does *NOT* contain the word 'wrong' one has
to do:

mysql> select count(*) FROM runs WHERE info is null or info not like '%wrong%';

+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
| 34671 |
+----------+
but not:
mysql> select count(*) FROM runs WHERE info not like %wrong%';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
| 5537 |
+----------+

which would lead to a much smaller number of selected rows.

Posted by M M on March 4 2004 11:28pm [Delete] [Edit]

I have managed to select random records using php and MySQL like the following:

$min=1;
$row=mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE 'table';"));
$max=$row["Auto_increment"];

$random_id=rand($min,$max);
$row=mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE id='$random_id'");

Voila...

Cezar
http://RO-Escorts.com

Posted by Geert van der Ploeg on March 9 2004 5:44am [Delete] [Edit]

Random records without PHP, only MySQL:

select * from mailinglists order by rand() limit 1

Regards,
Geert van der Ploeg

Posted by Cody Caughlan on May 26 2004 8:26pm [Delete] [Edit]

Sometimes it is nice to use the SELECT query options like SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS or

SQL_CACHE, but to maintain compatibility across different databases or even older versions of
MySQL which do not support those options, it is possible to enclose them in a comment block,
e.g.:

SELECT /*! 40000 SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS */ foo,bar FROM some_table;

The /* construct will stop DBMS's other than MySQL from parsing the comment contents, while
/*! will tell ALL MySQL versions to parse the "comment" (which is actually a non-comment to
MySQL). The /*!40000 construct will tell MySQL servers starting from 4.0.0 (which is the first
version to support SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS) to parse the comment, while earlier versions
will ignore it.

Posted by Boris Aranovich on June 9 2004 2:33pm [Delete] [Edit]

I am using this way to select random row or rows:

SELECT * [or any needed fileds], idx*0+RAND() as rnd_id FROM tablename ORDER BY
rnd_id LIMIT 1 [or the number of rows]

Meanwhile, I didn't stumble in any problems with this usage.

I picked this method in some forum, don't remember when, where or by who was it introduced :)

Posted by Michal Nedoszytko on August 10 2004 8:19am [Delete] [Edit]

My method of retrieving duplicate entries

In a database with personal information (name, surname, etc..) with an auto_increment index I
wanted to retrieve all the entries with same name and surname field (duplicate names), which by
accident were inserted to the base.

I used this syntax

SELECT name,surname,COUNT(name) AS cnt_n, COUNT(surname) AS cnt_s FROM

the_table GROUP BY name HAVING cnt_n>1 AND cnt_s>1;

I hope this might be of help to anyone that wants to do some extended maintenance on the
database

Posted by Dmitri Mikhailov on August 24 2004 7:30pm [Delete] [Edit]

On the other hand, for this case it's simplier to engage an appropriate index if there is such:

CREATE INDEX ccr_news_insert_date_i ON ccr_news (insert_date DESC);

SELECT *
FROM ccr_news
WHERE insert_date > 0;

or, if for some reason MySQL still uses a full table scan:
SELECT *
FROM ccr_news FORCE INDEX (ccr_news_insert_date_i)
WHERE insert_date > 0;

Posted by Adam Tylmad on August 25 2004 10:36am [Delete] [Edit]

If you want to ORDER BY [columnname] ASC

and have the NULL rows in the bottom
you can use ORDER BY -[columnname] DESC

Posted by Edward Hermanson on October 6 2004 6:51am [Delete] [Edit]

Select Name,Category FROM authors ORDER BY Category,Name;

Will allow you to sort by categories listed in a seperate table

IF the category column in this primary table contains ID values
from your ID column in your second reference table.

So your first "authors" table looks like:

id name category
1 Henry Miller 2
3 June Day 1
3 Thomas Wolf 2

and your second reference table looks like:

id category
1 Modern
2 Classics

Now when the order of categories is changed in the second table

the order of categories will be reflected in the primary table.

Then just select the categories from the reference table and put
the list into a numbered array. Then in your script when you run
across a category number from the first recordset just reference
the value from the index in the second array to obtain the value.
In php in the above example it might look like:

foreach ($recordset as $key => $record) {

echo $record["id"] . ":" . $record["name"] . ":" . $ordered_cats[$record["category"]];
}
This may seem obvious to some but I was pulling my hair out
trying to figure out how to order a recordset based on a list
from a different table. Hope this helps someone.

Ed

Posted by Greg Covey on December 2 2004 11:26pm [Delete] [Edit]

The LIMIT clause can be used when you would use TOP in Access or MS SQL.

Posted by Kenan Bektas on December 14 2004 5:05pm [Delete] [Edit]

(LINUX) By default, if you don't specify absolute path for OUTFILE in

select ... into OUTFILE "..."

It creates the file in "/var/lib/mysql/<database_name>"

Make sure current user has (NOT) a write permission in that directory.

Posted by Kumar S on January 4 2005 8:27am [Delete] [Edit]

If You want to find the rows which are having a column with identical values then,

SELECT managerId, count(company) FROM manager GROUP BY company HAVING

COUNT(company)>=8 (say)

Regards,
Kumar.S

Posted by Hervé Pagès on February 10 2005 5:59pm [Delete] [Edit]

The keyword WHERE is NOT part of the "where_definition"!

The following definition of the "where_definition":

"where_definition consists of the keyword WHERE followed by
an expression that indicates the condition or conditions that
rows must satisfy to be selected"

is in contradiction with the SELECT given syntax:

SELECT
...
[FROM table_references
[WHERE where_definition]

Posted by Imran Chaudhry on February 17 2005 4:13pm [Delete] [Edit]

I found a nifty way of influencing the ORDER of rows returned by a query that helps in
displaying a list with frequently accessed items at the top.

An example is a name/address form where the country is a selectable list. If most of your users
are from the UK and US you may want to do something like:

SELECT * FROM countries ORDER by iso_code IN ('UK', 'US') desc

Which returns something like:

+----------+----------------------------------------+
| iso_code | name |
+----------+----------------------------------------+
| UK | United Kingdom |
| US | United States |
| AF | Afghanistan |
| AL | Albania |
| DZ | Algeria |
| AS | American Samoa |

Hope this helps someone! megazoid@hotmail.com

Posted by Fahed Bizzari on February 22 2005 3:18pm [Delete] [Edit]

It seems there is no way to select * from table where a certain field is distinct. In 2 sqls it is easy:

$sql9 = "SELECT DISTINCT field AS distinctfield FROM table ORDER BY distinctfield ";
$res9= $db->execute($sql9);
for($ll=0;$ll<$res9->getNumTuples();$ll++)
{
$row = $res9->getTupleDirect($ll);
$distinctfield = $row[distinctfield];
$sql8="select * from table WHERE field='distinctfield' ORDER BY distinctfield LIMIT 1";
}

But not one!

Fahed

Posted by Lex Berman on February 22 2005 8:28pm [Delete] [Edit]
reply to Fahed Bizzari's post, based on Havilland-Fortesque-Smedley's comment (above) the
equivalent of select * while doing DISTINCT is:

select *, count(FIELD) from TABLE group by FIELD having count(FIELD)=1 into outfile
'foobar.txt';

then you can check the output. note that there are twice as many rows as records, because each
unique row is followed by its count (in this case count=1). so just toss the .txt file into something
and sort on the field containing the count and throw out all the rows =1. this is the same result as
a select * distinct FIELD (as far as I can tell).

anyway, works for me. aloha. Lex

Posted by Lex Berman on February 22 2005 8:32pm [Delete] [Edit]

oh, about the previous post, it's not correct because distinct should be

count(FIELD)=>1

which still doesn't solve the DISTINCT part

Lex

Posted by Gregory Turner on March 10 2005 4:00pm [Delete] [Edit]

In regards to:
_______________________________________________
******************************************
I found a nifty way of influencing the ORDER of rows returned by a query that helps in
displaying a list with frequently accessed items at the top.

An example is a name/address form where the country is a selectable list. If most of your users
are from the UK and US you may want to do something like:

SELECT * FROM countries ORDER by iso_code IN ('UK', 'US') desc

Which returns something like:

+----------+----------------------------------------+
| iso_code | name |
+----------+----------------------------------------+
| UK | United Kingdom |
| US | United States |
| AF | Afghanistan |
| AL | Albania |
| DZ | Algeria |
| AS | American Samoa |
_______________________________________________
******************************************
If found that if you also add in another 'iso_code' column in the order by statment after the first
one containing the IN() statment, it will sort the remaining records:
SELECT * FROM countries ORDER by iso_code IN ('UK', 'US') desc, iso_code
Posted by Heywood on March 11 2005 2:04pm [Delete] [Edit]

When using the SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE syntax, use a UNION to add headers. Here's an
example for CSV output:

SELECT 'Fiscal Year','Location','Sales'

UNION
SELECT FY, Loc, Sales INTO OUTFILE 'salesreport.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
FROM SalesTable;

This will add the text headers Fiscal Year, Location and Sales to your fields. Only caveat is with
an ORDER BY statement, if you don't want your headers sorted along with your data you need
to enclose it in parenthesis:

SELECT 'Fiscal Year','Location','Sales'

UNION
{SELECT FY, Loc, Sales INTO OUTFILE 'salesreport.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
FROM SalesTable
ORDER BY Sales DESC);

Posted by [name withheld] on April 21 2005 5:54pm [Delete] [Edit]

To correct Lex one more time, it should be count(FIELD)>=1.

So the whole query for retrieving a whole row with one field distinct is:

select *, count(FIELD) from TABLE group by FIELD having count(FIELD)>=1;

Thanks, Lex. You are a lifesaver.

Posted by Jerry Nelson on May 6 2005 6:57pm [Delete] [Edit]

As a newbie to MySQL and to dealing with BLOBs, I had a difficult time trying to determine
how to extract a BLOB field from the database back to a file. It turns out to be quite simple by
doing the following SQL:
select blobfield into dumpfile '/tmp/blobfile' from blobtable;

Posted by joel boonstra on May 12 2005 10:29pm [Delete] [Edit]

In response to Heywood's tip about adding column headers to OUTFILEs...

Make sure that the format of the columns that match up with your headers doesn't limit the
display of the headers. For instance, I was using the UNION tip to add a header to a column
defined as char(2) (for storing a two-letter state code). The resulting CSV file only displayed the
first two letters of my column header. The fix is simple, just use CAST() on the column in the
second SELECT to convert it to the appropriate type. In my case, doing something like this:

SELECT 'state header' FROM table UNION SELECT CAST(state AS char) FROM table INTO
OUTFILE [...]

worked just dandy. Hope that saves someone a little time.

Posted by Rene Liethof on June 8 2005 2:50pm [Delete] [Edit]

Arbitrary Ordering

I came across this example at

http://www.shawnolson.net/a/722/
Neat way of using the CASE statement.

Example for ordering price information

price is orderd ascending but the 0.00
prices end up underneath

SELECT dienst.dienst, dienst.url, dienst.info, dienst_prijs.dienst_eenheid, dienst_prijs.prijs,

dienst_prijs.inc_btw, dienst_prijs.dienst_optie,
CASE dienst_prijs.prijs
WHEN dienst_prijs.prijs = '0.00' THEN 1000
WHEN dienst_prijs.prijs > '0.00' THEN 10
ELSE NULL
END AS orderme
FROM dienst, dienst_prijs
WHERE dienst.taal = 'nl' &&
dienst.dienst_type = 'Internet toegang' &&
dienst.dienst != 'alle diensten' &&
dienst.publiceer != '' &&
dienst_prijs.dienst_eenheid IN ( 'maand', 'jaar' ) &&
dienst.dienst = dienst_prijs.dienst
ORDER BY orderme, dienst_prijs.prijs
Posted by Callum Macdonald on June 27 2005 6:54pm [Delete] [Edit]

If you want to use ORDER BY before GROUP BY, the only way I've found to achieve it is with
a subquery.

For example, if you want to get a list of users from a table UserActions sorted according to the
most recent action (based on a field called Time) the query would be:

SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM UserActions ORDER BY Time DESC) AS Actions

GROUP BY UserID ORDER BY Time DESC;

Without the subquery, the group is performed first, and so the first record that appears in the
database (which is not necessarily in the order you want) will be used to determine the sort order.
This caused me huge problems as my data was in a jumbled order within the table.

--Edit--
This same result can be achieved with the use of MAX(Time), so the query would be:

SELECT *, MAX(Time) AS LatestAction GROUP BY UserID ORDER BY LatestAction DESC;

As far as I can see, the subquery model still holds up if you need more complex sorting before
performing the GROUP.

Posted by Paul Montgomery on August 13 2005 8:06am [Delete] [Edit]

I've seen it asked elsewhere about how to select all duplicates, not just one row for each dupe.

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE dupes SELECT * FROM tablename GROUP BY colname

HAVING COUNT(*)>1 ORDER BY colname;
SELECT t.* FROM tablename t, dupes d WHERE t.colname = d.colname ORDER BY
t.colname;

Posted by Wayne Smith on November 4 2005 2:10am [Delete] [Edit]

Be careful about the "SELECT...INTO OUTFILE" options. They are similar to, but not exactly
the same as, the mysqldump options.

Two things:

1) The options in mysqldump can be in any order, because they are true command-line options
(that is, they are conceptually used together, but syntactically separate on the mysqldump
command line). The options in the SELECT...INTO OUTFILE need to be in the exact order as
specified in the documentation above.
2) The options MUST have dashes between the words (e.g., fields-enclosed-by) when use as
options with the mysqldump utility, but MUST NOT have dashes when used as options with the
SELECT...INTO OUTFILE. This may not be clear in the documentation above.

Wayne

Posted by Geoff on November 9 2005 9:22pm [Delete] [Edit]

In reply to Fahed Bizzari et al...

If you want to select all fields from distinct rows why not use:
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM table GROUP BY field;

Don't forget the DISTINCT relates to the ORDER BY / GROUP BY and has nothing to do with
the 'select_expr'

If you want the count as well then use:

SELECT DISTINCT *, count(*) AS count FROM table GROUP BY field;

Posted by Kumar Mitra­Endres on November 22 2005 12:51pm [Delete] [Edit]

Where is the pagination code as offered by the google search machine????

Kumar/Germany

Posted by Flavio Ventura on December 9 2005 12:17pm [Delete] [Edit]

If you have a binary string type field and you want a case insensitive sorting you can use CAST()
as follow:

case sensitive example (DECODE return a binary string):

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SELECT DECODE(EncodedField) AS DecodedField
FROM TableWithEncodedField
ORDER BY DecodedField;

case insensitive solution:

---------------------------------
SELECT CAST(DECODE(EncodedField) AS CHAR) AS DecodedField
FROM TableWithEncodedField
ORDER BY DecodedField;

I hope it may be usefull.

Posted by mike gieson on January 10 2006 5:13am [Delete] [Edit]

To select specific rows from the table use the IN statement.

Example:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE myid IN (2, 16, 93,102);

This would return multiple rows based on specific criteria.

Posted by Todd Farmer on January 22 2006 6:40am [Delete] [Edit]

For large tables with auto incremented primary key values, I have found the following to be most
efficient in obtaining one random row:

SELECT * FROM my_table

WHERE pk_column >=
(SELECT FLOOR( MAX(pk_column) * RAND()) FROM my_table)
ORDER BY pk_column
LIMIT 1;

Posted by Vlado Kocan on January 28 2006 10:35am [Delete] [Edit]

Reply to Edward Hermanson post (above):

I prefer this way of sorting table by column values listed in another table:

The accnumber column in primary table contains ID values from ID column in the secondary
table.

Primary table "contacts":

id name accnumber
1 Cooke 3
2 Peterson 3
3 Stevens 1

Secondary table "accounts":

id accname
1 Company1
2 Company2
3 Company3

SELECT contacts.lname, accounts.accname

FROM contacts, accounts
WHERE contacts.accnumber = accounts.id ORDER BY accname;

Posted by Lars­Erik Hoffsten on March 14 2006 10:35pm [Delete] [Edit]

ORDER BY textfield in natural order!?

Lets say you want the following result:
File1
File2
File10

I havn't found a way to do it in SQL, here is a way to do it in PHP (just replace 'order_by' to the
field you want to order by):

$result = mysql_query("SELECT order_by,... FROM table");

$rows = array();
if($result)
{
while(($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)))
$rows[] = $row;
usort($rows, create_function('$a, $b', 'return strnatcasecmp($a["order_by"], $b["order_by"]);'));
}

Posted by Michal Carson on March 19 2006 5:27am [Delete] [Edit]

SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE requires the id to have the FILE privilege. That is,

GRANT SELECT, FILE ON * . * TO "[whomever]"@ "localhost";

As noted above, the output directory must be writable by the id under which the mysqld process
is running. Use "grep user= /etc/my.cnf " to find it.

Posted by Andrew Culver on March 20 2006 3:40pm [Delete] [Edit]

Selecting a random row in SQL? Try:

set @a = (SELECT COUNT(*)-1 c FROM palette)*RAND() DIV 1;

PREPARE STMT FROM 'SELECT * FROM palette LIMIT ?,1';
EXECUTE STMT USING @a;

Posted by [name withheld] on March 21 2006 9:32am [Delete] [Edit]
If you want to keep field names, consider using mysqldump instead of SELECT INTO
OUTFILE.

I use this method to transfer small amounts of data from our live database to our test database,
for example when investigating a reported problem in our program code. (We cannot guarantee
the field order across all our databases.)

rem Edit order number before running

rem Give password when prompted
rem Result files will be in current working directory
\mysql\bin\mysqldump livedb -uliveuser -p --no-create-info --tables orderpayment --
where=orderid=2712>resultp.txt
\mysql\bin\mysqldump livedb -uliveuser -p --no-create-info --tables orderitem --
where=orderid=2712>resulti.txt
\mysql\bin\mysqldump livedb -uliveuser -p --no-create-info --tables orderheader --
where=id=2712>resulth.txt

Posted by Zhao Xinyou on March 29 2006 3:53pm [Delete] [Edit]

when you meet more conditions, you may use the following code:
select * from yourdatabase where fieldone='value1' and fieldtwo='value2';

Posted by John Bachir on April 3 2006 10:13pm [Delete] [Edit]

Fahed Bizzari, that is not 2 queries, that is $res9->getNumTuples() + 1 queries!

Posted by Michael Heyman on April 28 2006 1:22pm [Delete] [Edit]

To select the identifiers with the greatest value in each class (where each identifier falls into one
class):

SELECT id_class,id FROM tbl,(SELECT MAX(val) AS val FROM tbl GROUP BY id_class)
AS _tbl WHERE tbl.val = _tbl.val;

We had a table logging state changes for a series of objects and wanted to find the most recent
state for each object. The "val" in our case was an auto-increment field.

This seems to be the simplest solution that runs in a reasonable amount of time.

Posted by Rich Altmaier on May 4 2006 3:24am [Delete] [Edit]
In a student signup list, use sql to find classes which are
not full. Involves combined use of RIGHT JOIN, COUNT, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, and
ORDER BY.

CREATE TABLE `classdescription` (

`ClassID` mediumint(9) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`ClassType` varchar(10) NOT NULL default '',
`ClassName` varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
`ClassDate` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
`ClassMax` mediumint(9) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`ClassID`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

CREATE TABLE `class_signups` (

`s_PersonID` mediumint(9) NOT NULL default '0',
`s_ClassID` mediumint(9) NOT NULL default '0',
`s_Status` varchar(5) default NULL,
KEY `s_ClassID` (`s_ClassID`),
KEY `s_PersonID` (`s_PersonID`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

INSERT INTO `classdescription` VALUES (2, 'firstaid', '', '2005-01-02 11:00:00', 2);
INSERT INTO `classdescription` VALUES (3, 'advanced-med', '', '2005-01-02 13:00:00', 1);

INSERT INTO `class_signups` VALUES (11, 2, '');

INSERT INTO `class_signups` VALUES (12, 2, '');

Now use RIGHT JOIN to list all class descriptions along with signups if any,
SELECT cs.s_ClassID, cs.s_PersonID, cd.ClassName, cd.ClassID, cd.ClassType, cd.ClassDate,
cd.ClassMax
from class_signups cs RIGHT JOIN
classdescription cd on (cs.s_ClassID = cd.ClassID )
in itself, not too useful, but you can see classes
having no one signed up as a NULL.

To count the number of signups for each class:

SELECT cs.s_ClassID, COUNT(s_ClassID) AS ClassTotal, cd.ClassName, cd.ClassID,
cd.ClassType, cd.ClassDate, cd.ClassMax
from class_signups cs RIGHT JOIN
classdescription cd on (cs.s_ClassID = cd.ClassID )
GROUP BY cd.ClassID
The COUNT/GROUP BY options show a row per unique ClassID, and the COUNT is adding up
non-null occurances of field s_ClassID. If we had used COUNT(*) then the class with
no signups would have counted 1 record, rather than the desired 0/NULL for no
signups.
Now we show only classes where the count of signups is less than ClassMax, meaning the
class has openings!
SELECT cs.s_ClassID, COUNT(s_ClassID) AS ClassTotal, cd.ClassName, cd.ClassID,
cd.ClassType, cd.ClassDate, cd.ClassMax
from class_signups cs RIGHT JOIN
classdescription cd on (cs.s_ClassID = cd.ClassID )
GROUP BY cd.ClassID
HAVING ClassTotal < cd.ClassMax
The HAVING clause limits the after-JOIN output rows to ones matching its criteria, discarding
others!

We may want to look only at the firstaid ClassType, so add a WHERE clause to
the JOIN,
SELECT cs.s_ClassID, COUNT(s_ClassID) AS ClassTotal, cd.ClassName, cd.ClassID,
cd.ClassType, cd.ClassDate, cd.ClassMax
from class_signups cs RIGHT JOIN
classdescription cd on (cs.s_ClassID = cd.ClassID ) WHERE cd.ClassType='firstaid'
GROUP BY cd.ClassID
HAVING ClassTotal < cd.ClassMax
Now there are no outputs as firstaid is full, but
suppose we are looking in this list with respect
to a certain student PersonID==12. That is, we want to see classes this person can signup
for, including the ones they are already in!
In the case we need to disregard signups by PersonID==12 for e.g.,

SELECT cs.s_ClassID, COUNT(s_ClassID) AS ClassTotal, cd.ClassName, cd.ClassID,

cd.ClassType, cd.ClassDate, cd.ClassMax
from class_signups cs RIGHT JOIN
classdescription cd on (cs.s_ClassID = cd.ClassID AND cs.s_PersonID <> 12) WHERE
cd.ClassType='firstaid'
GROUP BY cd.ClassID
HAVING ClassTotal < cd.ClassMax
In the join we drop out signups of PersonID 12, so they don't get counted.

Finally we probably want to show the available classes in date order:

SELECT cs.s_ClassID, COUNT(s_ClassID) AS ClassTotal , cd.ClassName, cd.ClassID,

cd.ClassType, cd.ClassDate, cd.ClassMax
from class_signups cs RIGHT JOIN
classdescription cd on (cs.s_ClassID = cd.ClassID AND cs.s_PersonID <> 12)
WHERE cd.ClassType='firstaid'
GROUP BY cd.ClassID
HAVING ClassTotal < cd.ClassMax ORDER BY ClassDate

I had fun figuring this out, I hope it works for you.

(sorry it was so long).
Rich

Posted by YI ZHANG on May 10 2006 4:27pm [Delete] [Edit]

If you cancel a long-time running query by Ctrl-C, you might find the CPU load of mysqld
remains at 99%. That's because the query is still running on mysqld, and Ctrl-C only closes the
client.
Now, you can enter mysql again and use command SHOW PROCESSLIST to check the thread
of the query, and kill the query by command KILL thread_id.
I'm using mysql 5.0.21.

Posted by Wade Bowmer on May 14 2006 11:39pm [Delete] [Edit]

Be aware that SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS disables ORDER BY ... LIMIT optimizations (see

bugs http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=18454 and http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=19553).
Until it's fixed, you should run your own benchmarks with and without it.

Posted by Marc Grue on June 24 2006 10:44am [Delete] [Edit]

Since the LIMIT clause of a SELECT statement doesn't allow user variables you can use a
prepared statement as in the example above in the manual. An alternative is to load all record ids
of yourTable into a temporary table as shown below. This also has the benefit of getting all data
necessary for pagination of your result set:

CREATE PROCEDURE `listData`(IN _limitstart INT, IN _limit INT)

BEGIN
-- make a 'row container'
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS AllRows;
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE AllRows (rownum INT, id INT, label VARCHAR(50))
ENGINE=MEMORY;

-- insert all ids (and optional labels (for use in a page selector))
SET @a=-1;
INSERT INTO AllRows SELECT @a:=@a+1 AS rownum, id, CONCAT(first_name, ' ',
last_name) AS label FROM yourTable;

## Output 1: total number of rows

SELECT @a+1 AS total_rows;

## Output 2: id/labels for pagination [see table 'NumberSeq' below]

SELECT * FROM AllRows
INNER JOIN NumberSeq ON AllRows.rownum = NumberSeq.n*_limit
WHERE (n*_limit) < @a+1;
## Output 3: data for list
SELECT yourTable.* FROM yourTable
INNER JOIN AllRows ON yourTable.id = AllRows.id
WHERE rownum >= _limitstart AND rownum < (_limitstart+_limit);

DROP TEMPORARY TABLE AllRows;

END

The NumberSeq table just contains the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... 500 (or whatever limit you want to
set on number of pages..):

CREATE PROCEDURE `createNumberSeq `()

BEGIN
DECLARE _n int default -1;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS NumberSeq;
CREATE TABLE NumberSeq (n INT);
loop1: LOOP
SET _n = _n + 1;
INSERT INTO NumberSeq (n) VALUES _n;
IF _n >= 500 THEN
LEAVE loop1;
END IF
END LOOP loop1;
END

With smaller record sets the second approach is faster than the prepared statement approach.
Haven't checked speed with bigger record sets, but suspect the first approach will win then...

Hope this helps to get around the limitations of the LIMIT clause. To the MySQL team: any
plans to allow user variables in the LIMIT clause? (pleeeze!)

Posted by Rene Lopez on June 23 2006 10:19pm [Delete] [Edit]

If you want to get the record in an specific order you can do it like this

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY FIELD( id, 23, 234, 543, 23 )

+----------+---------------------------+
| id | name |
+----------+---------------------------+
| 23 | rene |
| 234 | miguel |
| 543 | ana |
| 23 | tlaxcala |

or if the table as a name

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY FIELD( name, 'miguel', 'rene', 'ana', 'tlaxcala' )
+----------+---------------------------+
| id | name |
+----------+---------------------------+
| 234 | miguel |
| 23 | rene |
| 543 | ana |
| 23 | tlaxcala |

Posted by Marc Grue on June 24 2006 11:51am [Delete] [Edit]

Example of using dynamic column_name parameters in the ORDER BY clause of a SELECT

statement in stored procedures:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/control-flow-functions.html
(go to posting by Marc Grue on June 24 2006)

Posted by Dennis Lindkvist on June 28 2006 8:10am [Delete] [Edit]

Or you could use this.

select [column], rand() as rnd from [table] order by rnd

Althoug there is still overhead compared to "order by null" its not as bad as "order by rand()".

Posted by Chris Whitten on July 14 2006 5:21pm [Delete] [Edit]

I was trying to figure out how to sort a varchar field which contained both number string and
alphanumeric string. I wanted to sort it so that the numbers would be in order and then the
alphanumeric entries would be in order. Here is the query that helped me accomplish that:

SELECT partnum, comments , if( partnum >0, cast( partnum AS SIGNED ) , 0 ) AS numpart,
if( partnum >0, 0, partnum ) AS stringpart
FROM `part`
ORDER BY `numpart` , `stringpart`

Posted by Frank Flynn on October 6 2006 11:05pm [Delete] [Edit]

If you wish to use OUTFILE or DUMPFILE with a variable for the file name you cannot simply
put it in place - MySQL will not resolve the name.

But you can put the whole command into a variable and use "prepare" and "execute" for
example:
SELECT @myCommand := concat("SELECT * into OUTFILE
'/home/mysql/archive/daemonLog-", DATE_FORMAT(now(),'%Y%m%d-%H%i%s'), "' FROM
daemonLog");
PREPARE stmt FROM @myCommand;
EXECUTE stmt;

This will work, Good luck.

Posted by Michael Ekoka on November 8 2006 1:39am [Delete] [Edit]

Just my little contribution when it comes to random row selection used with mysql & php. Based
on the solution that consists of returning the count(*) of a table, then using that value to select a
random row.

SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * COUNT(*)) AS rand_row FROM foo;

SELECT * FROM foo LIMIT {$rand_row}, 1;
or
SELECT COUNT(*) AS rows FROM foo;
SELECT * FROM foo LIMIT {rand(0,$rows-1)}, 1;

The problem with that solution from the MySQL standpoint is that there still remains the
possibility of duplicate selections when we want more than one row, especially if the table is not
that large (e.g. what are the chances of getting at least 2 duplicate rows while selecting 5
randomly, 1 at a time, out of a set of 10).

My approach is to rather generate unique random numbers from php, then fetch the
corresponding table rows:

1- Use the appropriate php methods to fetch the table count from MySQL as done before:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM foo;

2- Use php to generate some unique random numbers based on the count.

This is the php function that i use. It takes 3 arguments: the minimum and maximum range
values, and the amount of unique random numbers to be returned. It returns these numbers as an
array.

<?php
/*Array of Unique Random Numbers*/

function uniq_rand($min,$max,$size){
$randoms=array(); //this is our array

/*if ($min > $max) swap their value*/

if($min>$max){
$min=$min^$max;$max=$min^$max;$min=$min^$max;
 }

/*if requested size of array is larger than possible

or if requested size of array is negative return*/
if ( (($max-$min)+1)<$size || $size<=0 ){return false;}

/*while array has not reached the requested size

keep generating random numbers and insert them
if they're not yet present in the array */
while (count($randoms)<$size){
$newval = rand($min,$max);
if(!in_array($newval,$randoms)){$randoms[] = $newval;}
}

return $randoms;
}
?>

3- Once you receive your set of randoms from the above function, perform a query for each
random:
<?php
foreach($randoms as $random_row){
$query="SELECT * FROM foo LIMIT $random_row, 1;"
//perform query, retrieve values and move on to the next random row
...
}
?>

That's it
-----

On a side note regarding the php random number generation function that I have here, I'm sure
it's not the best solution all the time. For example, the closer the amount of random numbers gets
to the range of numbers available the less efficient the function gets, i.e. if you have a range of
300 numbers and you want 280 of them unique and random, the function could spend quite some
time trying to get the last 10 numbers into the array. Some probabilities get involved here, but I
suspect that it would be faster to insert the 300 numbers directly into an array, shuffle that array,
then finally select the 280 first entries and return them.

Also, as pointed earlier in the thread, keep in mind that if your table isn't that large, just
performing the following works very well (e.g. selecting 5 random rows on a moderately large
table):
SELECT * FROM foo ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5;

Posted by Rustam Valiev on November 17 2006 7:50am [Delete] [Edit]
If you want use multilanguage queryies you cat use this:
Table 1
--------------
langid langname
--------------
1 rus
2 eng
3 den
---------------
Table 2 (catalog)
-----------------------
catid url
-----------------------
1 www.google.com
2 www.yandex.ru
3 www.mysql.com
------------------------
table 3 (titles of sites from Table 3)
-------------------------------------
langid catid title
-------------------------------------
1 1 Poiskovaya sistema
2 1 Search system
1 2 Portal
2 2 Portal
3 2 Portal
1 3 Sayt razrabotchikov MySQL
2 3 Site of MySQL's team
3 3 Bla bla bla
------------------------------------
And you need select sites from table2 on any language (for example Denmark), but site
google.com have not title by Denmark. Ok if you can't select title by current language, you
should select title by default language (here russian). You can make in one query
SELECT *, (
SELECT title
FROM table3
WHERE table3.catid = table2.catid AND langid = 3
UNION
SELECT title
FROM table3
WHERE table3.catid = table2.catid AND langid = 1
LIMIT 1
) as title
FROM table2

It very easy, but i think it query very big for MySQL if table2 contain around 1000-5000 rows,
and site have 5000-6000 people per second.

You can make it another:

SELECT *, (SELECT title FROM table3 ORDER BY IF(langid='1',0,1) ASC LIMIT 1) as title
FROM `table2`
i couldn't compare this queries, if anybody can compary spped of this method please write
r.valiev@uzinfocom.uz (by russian (:^) .

Now my task more complexed, i need select any site from table2 :
1 - On current language
2 - If site have not title, Select title by default language
3 - If site have not title on default, Select title by any language.
I think if will make it by thats method - it will very big for MySQL.

Posted by Ray Perea on December 8 2006 8:57pm [Delete] [Edit]

In regards to:
Posted by Count Henry De Havilland-Fortesque-Smedley on January 13 2004 5:59am
--------------START QUOTE---------------------
Sometimes you want to retrieve the records that DONT match a select statement.

Consider this select:

SELECT CarIndex FROM DealerCatalog, BigCatalog WHERE
DealerCatalog.CarIndex=BigCatalog.CarIndex

This finds all the CarIndex values in the Dealer's catalog that are in the bigger distributor catalog.

How do I then find the dealer CarIndex values that ARE NOT in the bigger catalog?

The answer is to use LEFT JOIN - anything that doesn't join is given a NULL value , so we look
for that:

SELECT CarIndex FROM DealerCatalog LEFT JOIN BigCatalog ON

DealerCatalog.CarIndex=BigCatalog.CarIndex WHERE BigCatalog.CarIndex IS NULL
------------------END QUOTE--------------------------

I have found that the Left Join is quite expensive when doing this type of SQL Query. It is great
if you have less than 1000 records in each table that you want to compare. But the real hardship
is realized when you have 100,000 records in each table. Trying to do this type of join takes
forever because each and every record in 1 table has to be compared to each and every record in
the other table. In the case of 100,000 records, MySQL will do 10 BILLION comparisons (from
what I have read, I may be mistaken).

So I tried the sql query above to see which rows in 1 table do not have a corresponding value in
the other table. (Note that each table had close to 100,000 rows) I waited for 10 minutes and the
Query was still going. I have since came up with a better way that works for me and I hope it
will work for someone else. Here goes....

1: You must create another field in your base table. Let's call the new field `linked` (For the
example above, we would perform this query ---ONLY ONCE--- to create the linked field in the
DealerCatalog table.)

ALTER TABLE `DealerCatalog` ADD `linked` TINYINT NOT NULL ;

2: Now to get your results, simply execute the following queries instead of the left join query
stated above

UPDATE `DealerCatalog` SET `linked` = 0;

UPDATE `DealerCatalog`, `BigCatalog` SET `linked` = 1 WHERE `DealerCatalog`.`CarIndex`
= `BigCatalog`.`CarIndex`;
SELECT `CarIndex` FROM `DealerCatalog` WHERE `linked` = 0;

I know it is 3 queries instead of 1 but I am able to achieve the same result with 100K rows in
each table in about 3 seconds instead of 10 minutes (That is just how long I waited until I gave
up. Who knows how long it actually takes) using the LEFT JOIN method.

I would like to see if anyone else has a better way of dealing with this type of situation. I have
been looking for a better solution for a few years now. I haven't tried MySQL 5 yet to see if there
is a way to maybe create a view to deal with this situation but I suspect MySQL developers know
about the expensive LEFT JOIN....IS NULL situation on large tables and are doing something
about it.

Until then, you have my contribution

Ray Perea

Posted by Frederic Theriault on December 8 2006 10:26pm [Delete] [Edit]

Make sure you don't use stored functions in your WHERE clause if it is not necessary.

For our search feature, we needed to get an id using a stored function. Since it was in the
WHERE clause, it reprocesses the function for every row! This could turn out to be pretty heavy.

If you can, do it in the FROM clause. Ex:

SELECT
...
FROM
...,
(select getSpecialID() as specialID) as tmp
WHERE
...
In our case we went from 6.5 sec query to 0.48 sec. We have over 2 million rows in our tables.

Posted by Héctor Hugo Huergo on April 19 2007 2:12pm [Delete] [Edit]

Hi! I'm using SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE. First I´ve permissions problems. Add to the user the
FILE privileges... AND RESTART THE DAEMON :). Bye

Posted by Will Jaspers on May 4 2007 9:36pm [Delete] [Edit]

For anyone utilizing two or more tables to create select boxes, I've finally (and painstakingly)
found a way to check if the item is selected.

-- Sample table 1, we'll call this 'STATES'

CREATE TABLE states
(
state_id int auto_increment not null,
state_code char(2) not null,
state_name varchar(100) not null,
UNIQUE(state_code),
PRIMARY KEY(state_id)
);

CREATE TABLE drivers

(
driver id int not null auto_increment,
driver_name varchar(255) not null,
PRIMARY KEY(driver_id)
);

CREATE TABLE drove_to_states

(
state_id int not null,
driver_id int not null,
arrived datetime not null,
departed datetime not null,
notes text
);

-- Query
SELECT
s.`state_code`,
s.`state_name`,
IF(state_id IN
(SELECT d2s.state_id
FROM drove_to_states d2s
WHERE driver_id = '%u'
), 1, null)
`selected`
FROM `states` s,
ORDER BY `state_name` ASC;

Using PHP's sprintf command, we can create a select field using this query:
<?php
[...]
$driver_id = 1;
define("QUERY", (SEE ABOVE) );
define("OPTION",'<option value="%s"%s>%s</option>');
$query = mysql_query(sprintf(QUERY, $driver_id), $connect);
echo '<select>';
while(list($code,$state,$selected) = mysql_fetch_row($query))
{
$selected = is_null($selected) ? null : ' selected';
echo sprintf(OPTION, $code, $selected, $state);
}
echo '</select>';
[...]
?>

Hope this helps anyone.

If anyone has a better way of writing this, please post.

Posted by Martin Sarfy on August 14 2007 7:58pm [Delete] [Edit]

SELECT INTO OUTFILE creates world-writable files. To avoid this security risk, you can
create new subdirectory with +x rights for mysql and your user only (e.g. using chown me:mysql
restricted_dir, chmod 770 restricted_dir), and then save the file into this directory. This way only
you and mysql process can modify the file.

Posted by Dan Bogdan on October 27 2007 4:28pm [Delete] [Edit]

If you want to copy a file from the server in other location you can use
select load_file('source_file') into OUTFILE 'target_file'
Security issue on windows ... you can copy any file from any folder even if you don't have access
to that file
to an convenient folder where you have access !!
Posted by Drazen Djurisic on November 13 2007 5:39pm [Delete] [Edit]

If you need names from second table for more then 1 columns in first table.
Select
table1.id,
table1.konto,
table2.name as name1,
table1.konto1,
table2_2.name as name2,
table1.konto3,
table2_3.naziv as name3,
from table1
left join table2 on (table1.konto=table2.id)
left join table2 as table2_2 on (table1.konto2=table2_2.id)
left join table2 as table2_3 on (table1.konto3=table2_3.id)

Posted by Rich Altmaier on February 16 2008 8:01pm [Delete] [Edit]

As a variant on the random row selection question, I had the goal of reading out a limited set of
rows, always in the same order, but starting at a different point in the sequence each time (like
Facebook short list of members):
e.g. given records a, b, c, d, e, f
I want random selections of triplets such as:
b, c, d
c, d, e
f, a, b --> note I want wraparound!

The prior postings on random rows selections have shown:

SELECT * FROM foo ORDER BY count*RAND() LIMIT 5;
This will yield the 5 random rows, but not in the same record ordering.

To preserve order, including a wraparound,

we must UNION a pair of queries.
For e.g. to get 3 rows from a table of $counted rows,
where we have selected $start, which happens to be within
3 of the end, we wrap as:

(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT $start, 1) UNION

(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT 0, 2)

suppose the table has 6 rows, and we decide

randomly to start with row 6, then concretely:
(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT 5, 1) UNION
(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT 0, 2)
Posted by engin karahan on February 17 2008 2:59pm [Delete] [Edit]

As a variant on the random row selection question, I had the goal of reading out a limited set of
rows, always in the same order, but starting at a different point in the sequence each time (like
Facebook short list of members):
e.g. given records a, b, c, d, e, f
I want random selections of triplets such as:
b, c, d
c, d, e
f, a, b --> note I want wraparound!

The prior postings on random rows selections have shown:

SELECT * FROM foo ORDER BY count*RAND() LIMIT 5;
This will yield the 5 random rows, but not in the same record ordering.

To preserve order, including a wraparound,

we must UNION a pair of queries.
For e.g. to get 3 rows from a table of $counted rows,
where we have selected $start, which happens to be within
3 of the end, we wrap as:

(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT $start, 1) UNION

(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT 0, 2)

suppose the table has 6 rows, and we decide

randomly to start with row 6, then concretely:
(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT 5, 1) UNION
(SELECT * FROM `Ordering` ORDER BY something LIMIT 0, 2)

Posted by Michael Yakobi on March 6 2008 8:32am [Delete] [Edit]

Rotating rows to columns - crosstab pivoted queries

Having the following tables where Attributes.objId refers to Objects.id:

| Objects Attributes
+----+------+------+ +-------+-----+-------+
| id | type | name | | objId | key | value |
+====+======+======+ +=======+=====+=======+
| 1 | T1 | O1 | | 1 | K1 | V1 |
| 2 | T2 | O2 | | 1 | K2 | V2 |
| 3 | T1 | O3 | | 2 | K3 | V3 |
| 4 | T2 | O4 | | 2 | K4 | V4 |
| | 2 | K5 | V5 |
| | 3 | K1 | V6 |
| | 3 | K2 | V7 |
The common approach for selecting the attributes of each object into a single result-row per
object is to join Objects with Attributes multiple times. However, not only such SELECT can
grow very big and ugly, with large tables it becomes very slow.
This could be dealt with using group-by functions, so to select all the objects of type T1, use the
following SQL:
| SELECT
| o.id,
| o.name,
| MAX(IF(a.key='K1', a.value, null)) as K1,
| MAX(IF(a.key='K2', a.value, null)) as K2
| FROM
| Objects o,
| Attributes a
| WHERE
| o.id = a.objid and
| o.type = 'T1'
| GROUP BY
| a.id
The result will be:
+----+------+----+----+
| id | name | K1 | K2 |
+====+======+====+====+
| 1 | O1 | V1 | V2 |
| 3 | O3 | V6 | V7 |

Posted by Wiebe Cazemier on March 25 2008 7:17pm [Delete] [Edit]

For those who don't fully understand the concept of joins, I wrote an article which might help.

http://www.halfgaar.net/sql-joins-are-easy

Posted by Sam on April 8 2008 4:49pm [Delete] [Edit]

I just spent a few hours figuring this one out and there doesn't seem to be much info online about
it so I thought I'd share.

You should use the following syntax to create a CSV file in the format expected by Microsoft
Excel:

... INTO OUTFILE '/temp.csv' FIELDS ESCAPED BY '""' TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED
BY '"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';

However fields with carriage returns may break the CSV as MySQL will automatically close a
field when the \r\n line break is found. To work around this, replace all \r\n breaks with \n. The
field does not close on \n breaks and it will be read into a single cell in Excel. You can do this in
the same SQL statement, for example:

SELECT REPLACE(field_with_line_breaks, '\r\n', '\n') FROM table INTO OUTFILE '/temp.csv'

FIELDS ESCAPED BY '""' TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '"' LINES TERMINATED
BY '\r\n';
I also found that null values could break the CSV. These can be handled in a similar way:

SELECT IFNULL(possible_null_field, "") FROM table INTO OUTFILE '/temp.csv' FIELDS

ESCAPED BY '""' TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';

Note: this replaces NULL values with an empty string which is technically not the same thing
but it will give you an empty cell in Excel instead of breaking the CSV structure and shifting the
following cells to the left.

Posted by Paris Alex on October 1 2008 10:29am [Delete] [Edit]

To create a SELECT statement that categorize and label its result set according to special rules,
try this...

SELECT 'cheap' AS priceCat, productName productCount FROM MyProducts WHERE price <
1000
UNION
SELECT 'moderate' AS priceCat, productName FROM MyProducts WHERE price >= 1000
AND price <2000
UNION
SELECT 'expensive' AS priceCat, productName FROM MyProducts WHERE price >= 2000

It essentially returns a two column result set. The first column contains the word 'cheap',
'moderate' or 'expensive' depending on the price of the product. The second column is the
product name. This query can easily be modified to return a count of number of products
categorized by the price range:

SELECT 'cheap' AS priceCat, COUNT(*) productCount FROM MyProducts WHERE price <
1000
UNION
SELECT 'moderate' AS priceCat, COUNT(*) FROM MyProducts WHERE price >= 1000 AND
price <2000
UNION
SELECT 'expensive' AS priceCat, COUNT(*) FROM MyProducts WHERE price >= 2000

It may sound like an obvious thing the an experienced SQL guy, but I think this tip will be useful
to a beginner. Hope this tip helps a SQL developer soon! ;-)

Paris
http://www.loveparishotel.com/

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