Re: Diffcult query

In article <d9Iea(dot)117330$JE5(dot)48428(at)news2(dot)central(dot)cox(dot)net>, Dan Winslow wrote:
> Hi folks. This is giving me fits. I feel like it oughta be simple, but
> apparantly its not...I think.
>
> Given a table :
>
> create table tablea (
> code1 varchar(32),
> code2 varchar(32),
> cost int
> );
>
> and the rows
>
> code1 code2 cost
> ----------------------------------
> "aaa" "bbb" 2
> "ddd" "eee" 3
> "bbb" "aaa" 6
> "ggg" "hhh" 4
>
> I need a ( preferably single ) query that will sum the costs for all unique
> pairs of codes, without regard to column order. That is, for summing
> purposes, rows 1 and 3 are identical, and should produce the sum of 8 for
> the unordered pair("aaa","bbb"). It should also, of course, prevent the case
> where ("bbb","aaa") is considered a seperate pair. Any ideas would be much
> appreciated.
>
>

Maybe you could create a function that will return all of the rows
with a particular pair of codes.

Then I think you could GROUP BY that function...