Question

I have a fact table that contains some finance data. There is a column (VERS_NM) that defines wherther the value is “Actual” or “Current Outlook”. The value for these two should always be the same but we noticed in some reports it seems incorrect. So I want to write a query to find where the actual value does not match the current outlook.

I cannot wrap my head around a way to do this.

Here is what the table looks like:

So to recap there will be an identical row to row 1 except the VERS_NM column will say “Actual”. At least it is supposed to be, I want to find any instances where the Actual and Current Outlook don’t match. Any help or ideas is much appreciated. Just a push in the right direction or some kind of plan to tackle this would be great.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could just self join the data, replacing the fields a, b, c, d with the fields that indicate that the rows are equivilent.

SELECT
  *
FROM
  yourTable    AS actual
INNER JOIN
  yourTable    AS outlook
    ON  actual.a = outlook.a
    AND actual.b = outlook.b
    AND actual.c = outlook.c
    AND actual.d = outlook.d
WHERE
      actual.VERS_NM  = 'Actual'
  AND outlook.VERS_NM = 'Current Outlook'
  AND actual.FINC_ACCT_METRIC_VAL <> outlook.FINC_ACCT_METRIC_VAL