How to delete rows number 2,3,4...

Started by A Bover 15 years ago4 messagesgeneral
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#1A B
gentosaker@gmail.com

Hello.

I have a table

create table foo (
a serial,
b int,
c int,
.... more fields ...);

and now I wish to remove for each combination of b and c, all the
rows except the one with the highest value of a.

For example
a b c other fields
=====
1 5 5 .....
2 5 5 ....
3 2 3 ....
4 2 2 ...
5 5 5 ...

should leave

a b c other fields
=====
3 2 3 ....
4 2 2 ...
5 5 5 ...

is there some clever command for this or will I have to write a
special function that loops through all values of b and c ?

#2Alban Hertroys
dalroi@solfertje.student.utwente.nl
In reply to: A B (#1)
Re: How to delete rows number 2,3,4...

On 8 Oct 2010, at 8:59, A B wrote:

Hello.

I have a table

create table foo (
a serial,
b int,
c int,
.... more fields ...);

and now I wish to remove for each combination of b and c, all the
rows except the one with the highest value of a.

Or said differently: Delete all the rows where there exists a value of A that is higher than the one in the current row, given B and C are equal.

In SQL that is:

DELETE FROM foo WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT 1
FROM foo
WHERE foo.a > a
AND foo.b = bar.b
AND foo.c = bar.c
)

Alban Hertroys

--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.

!DSPAM:737,4caeeabc678306717112265!

#3A B
gentosaker@gmail.com
In reply to: Alban Hertroys (#2)
Re: How to delete rows number 2,3,4...

Thank you all for your replies.

2010/10/8 Alban Hertroys <dalroi@solfertje.student.utwente.nl>:

Show quoted text

On 8 Oct 2010, at 8:59, A B wrote:

Hello.

I have a table

create table foo (
a serial,
b int,
c int,
.... more fields ...);

and now I wish to remove for each combination of b and c,  all the
rows except the one with the highest value of a.

Or said differently: Delete all the rows where there exists a value of A that is higher than the one in the current row, given B and C are equal.

In SQL that is:

DELETE FROM foo WHERE EXISTS (
       SELECT 1
         FROM foo
        WHERE foo.a > a
          AND foo.b = bar.b
          AND foo.c = bar.c
)

Alban Hertroys

--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.

!DSPAM:871,4caeeab7678305532215207!

#4Ben Carbery
ben.carbery@gmail.com
In reply to: A B (#3)
Re: How to delete rows number 2,3,4...

Depending on the significance of the primary key, another option may have
been simply a unique constraint (b,c) on the table before the data was added

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 9:55 PM, A B <gentosaker@gmail.com> wrote:

Show quoted text

Thank you all for your replies.

2010/10/8 Alban Hertroys <dalroi@solfertje.student.utwente.nl>:

On 8 Oct 2010, at 8:59, A B wrote:

Hello.

I have a table

create table foo (
a serial,
b int,
c int,
.... more fields ...);

and now I wish to remove for each combination of b and c, all the
rows except the one with the highest value of a.

Or said differently: Delete all the rows where there exists a value of A

that is higher than the one in the current row, given B and C are equal.

In SQL that is:

DELETE FROM foo WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT 1
FROM foo
WHERE foo.a > a
AND foo.b = bar.b
AND foo.c = bar.c
)

Alban Hertroys

--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.

!DSPAM:871,4caeeab7678305532215207!