Re: Selecting distinct records

Dave,
How about a job that runs once that cleans the whole thing?
Or:
[Warning, pseudo PHPish code]

$rs_sid = select distinct (sessionid) from "logs";
while ($s = pg_fetch_object($rs_sid)
{
$rs_stuff = select * from "logs" where .... and "sessionid" = $s->id
for (loop of $rs_stuff)
{
$total+=$rs_stuff->sessiontime
}
echo "Session $s->id has $total seconds used";
}

This method involves a select for each session (might be slow on millions of
records :) ). This might work once or twice but I don't see it as a
suitable solution if this has to happen on a daily basis.

I know that the latest PostgreSQL does nested selects just fine (I've
got one paticular statement that has three nested selects ) and it's
performance isn't as bad as you'd think, well at least after the query
analyzer has seen it once and it gets cached.

/B

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave [Hawk-Systems]" <dave(at)hawk-systems(dot)com>
To: "David Busby" <busby(at)pnts(dot)com>; <pgsql-php(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 13:26
Subject: RE: Selecting distinct records

> > Try:
> >select distinct on (sessionid) sum(sessiontime) from logs
> >where name='joeblowuser' and datetime > 1036040400
> >group by sessionid.
>
> sorry, I wasn't clear... the problem arises when we need to sort the data
for
> output. postgres demands that the distinct items be first in the ordering
> process, which would not allow display by session, name etc...
>
> the obvious result would be to nest the select statements but can't seem
to get
> that to work either (working with version 7.0.3)
>
> eg/ select * from (select distinct on (sessionid) from logs where....) as
> tempname order by sessiondate desc
>
> gives me an error on the second select, so not sure that is a workable
solution
> either.
>
> >sum() is an aggerate (sp?) function, that means it munges a field
> >(sessiontime) from multiple records into one field in one record. Since
you
> >are also selecting sessionid (from mulitple records) you need to munge it
> >some how, that munge is accomplished via 'group by'. From your previous
> >e-mail it seems that (IMHO) the real problem is that duplicates are
getting
> >inserted via external hardware interaction, this select might be a
bandage
> >on a wound whose true size isn't known...
>
> agreed, and that problem has been corrected, but we are dealing with close
to a
> million records which have these duplicates strewn about within... rather
> annoying, looking for a bandaid in teh select to avoid intensive
post-select
> processing of the output.
>
> Dave
>