Question

I have a problem which I can’t really see how to work, I’ve tried some things based on findings on
Google, but to no avail. I hope someone here can help.

I have two tables (A and B), in table A I have some overview data which I want to select, and in table B I have details corresponding to table A (joined on two parameters), however the data in table B only needs to be summarized on number of rows.

I have this query:

SELECT s.CartID,
   s.Sender,
   s.Destination,
   s.CartType,
   s.SendDate,
   p.PackageID,
   p.CartID,
   COUNT(b.*) AS nRows
         FROM tblA s LEFT OUTER JOIN tblB p
         ON s.CartID = p.CartID AND s.SendDate = p.CartDate
         WHERE s.Client='3' AND s.SendDate BETWEEN '2012-09-01' AND '2012-09-07'

However, this only gives the following errror:

Incorrect syntax near ‘‘.*

I’ve also tried using this COUNT(b.PackageID) instead but then I get:

Column ‘tblA.CartID’ is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.

I really don’t see how I’m going to get this data in one query.

Any help would be appreciated. 🙂

Answer 1

The error is telling you that you need to add all fields in the SELECT to either a GROUP BY or an aggregate like this:

SELECT s.CartID,
   s.Sender,
   s.Destination,
   s.CartType,
   s.SendDate,
   p.PackageID,
   p.CartID,
   COUNT(p.*) AS nRows  -- I am guessing this should be p not b
FROM tblA s 
LEFT OUTER JOIN tblB p
  ON s.CartID = p.CartID 
  AND s.SendDate = p.CartDate
WHERE s.Client='3' 
  AND s.SendDate BETWEEN '2012-09-01' AND '2012-09-07'
GROUP BY s.CartID,
   s.Sender,
   s.Destination,
   s.CartType,
   s.SendDate,
   p.PackageID,
   p.CartID

If you do not want to GROUP BY all of those fields, then you can also use a sub-query similar to this:

SELECT s.CartID,
   s.Sender,
   s.Destination,
   s.CartType,
   s.SendDate,
   p.PackageID,
   p.CartID,
   p.Cnt as nRows
FROM tblA s 
LEFT OUTER JOIN
(
  SELECT COUNT(*) cnt, CartID, PackageID, CartDate
  FROM tblB
  GROUP BY CartID, PackageID, CartDate
) p
  ON s.CartID = p.CartID 
  AND s.SendDate = p.CartDate
WHERE s.Client='3' 
  AND s.SendDate BETWEEN '2012-09-01' AND '2012-09-07'