Question

I have a data-analysis question, that I could easily solve with some T-SQL or some scripting, but I was wondering if there was a clever SQL solution. The problem is that it messes a bit with SQL’s row-independence assumption a bit.

I have a table that consists of name-value pairs associated with a user and ordered by submission, for example:

ID      USERID  VARIABLE        VALUE   SUBMITTED
3115    2287    votech05    2   2009-02-02 15:34:00
3116    2287    comcol05    1   2009-02-02 15:34:00
3117    2287    fouryr05    1   2009-02-02 15:35:00
3118    2287    none05          2   2009-02-02 15:35:00
3119    2287    ocol1_05    2   2009-02-02 15:44:00
3120    2287    disnone         2   2009-02-02 15:45:00
3121    2287    dissense    2   2009-02-02 15:49:00
3122    2287    dismobil    3   2009-02-02 15:51:00
3123    2287    dislearn    3   2009-02-02 15:51:00
3124    2287    disment         3   2009-02-02 15:52:00
3125    2287    disother    2   2009-02-02 15:55:00
3126    2287    disrefus    7   2009-02-02 15:58:00

I’d like to be able to determine the value and count of the largest group of identical values (when the data is ordered the ID primary key). So, for the above example, because I have four value=2 appearing in sequence, and only three value=3, I would want to report:

USERID     VALUE      COUNT
2287       2          4

for the given user.

Again, this would could be done fairly-quickly using other tools, but since the data set is quite large (about 75 million records) and frequently changing, it would be nice to be able to solve this problem with a query. I’m working with SQL Server 2005.

Answer 1

(Edited after comment)

You can do that by assigning a “head” number to each group of consecutive values. After that you select the head number for each row, and do an aggregate per head.

Here’s an example, with CTE’s for readability:

WITH
OrderedTable as (
    select value, rownr = row_number() over (order by userid, id)
    from YourTable
    where userid = 2287
),
Heads as (
    select cur.rownr, CurValue = cur.value
    ,   headnr = row_number() over (order by cur.rownr)
    from OrderedTable cur
    left join OrderedTable prev on cur.rownr = prev.rownr+1 
    where IsNull(prev.value,-1) != cur.value
),
ValuesWithHead as (
    select value
    ,   HeadNr = (select max(headnr) 
                from Heads 
                where Heads.rownr <= data.rownr)
    from OrderedTable data
)
select Value, [Count] = count(*)
from ValuesWithHead
group by HeadNr, value
order by count(*) desc

This will output:

Value   Count
2       4
3       3
1       2
2       1
2       1
7       1

Use “top 1” to select the first row only.

Here’s my query to create the test data:

create table YourTable (
    id int primary key,
    userid int,
    variable varchar(25),
    value int
)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3115, 2287, 'votech05', 2)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3116, 2287, 'comcol05', 1)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3117, 2287, 'fouryr05', 1)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3118, 2287, 'none05', 2)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3119, 2287, 'ocol1_05', 2)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3120, 2287, 'disnone', 2)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3121, 2287, 'dissense', 2)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3122, 2287, 'dismobil', 3)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3123, 2287, 'dislearn', 3)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3124, 2287, 'disment', 3)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3125, 2287, 'disother', 2)
insert into YourTable (id, userid, variable, value) values (3126, 2287, 'disrefus', 7)