Question

I started with a query:

SELECT strip.name as strip, character.name as character   from strips, characters, appearances  where strips.id = appearances.strip_id    and characters.id = appearances.character.id    and appearances.date in (...) 

Which yielded me some results:

strip                 | character 'Calvin & Hobbes'     | 'Calvin' 'Calvin & Hobbes'     | 'Hobbes' 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Pig' 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Rat' 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Hobbes'  # a guest appearance 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Calvin'  # a guest appearance 

Then I wanted to also get the COUNT of the number of times a character is used (in any strip) within the result set. So I tried:

SELECT count(character.id), strip.name as strip, character.name as character   from strips, characters, appearances  where strips.id = appearances.strip_id    and characters.id = appearances.character.id    and appearances.date in (...) 

But that gave me

[ERROR 11:20:17] Mixing of GROUP columns (MIN(),MAX(),COUNT(),...) with no GROUP columns is illegal if there is no GROUP BY clause 

So I tried:

SELECT count(character.id), strip.name as strip, character.name as character   from strips, characters, appearances  where strips.id = appearances.strip_id    and characters.id = appearances.character.id    and appearances.date in (...)  group by character.id 

Which gave me

count | strip                 | character 4     | 'Calvin & Hobbes'     | 'Calvin' 4     | 'Calvin & Hobbes'     | 'Hobbes' 2     | 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Pig' 2     | 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Rat' 

That is, I lose all the extra information about exactly which characters appear in which strips.

What I’d like to get is this:

count | strip                 | character 4     | 'Calvin & Hobbes'     | 'Calvin' 4     | 'Calvin & Hobbes'     | 'Hobbes' 2     | 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Pig' 2     | 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Rat' 4     | 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Calvin' 4     | 'Pearls Before Swine' | 'Hobbes' 

But I can’t seem to figure it out. I’m on MySQL if it matters. Perhaps it’ll just take two queries.

Answer 1

Does mySQL support analytic functions? Like:

SELECT foo.bar, baz.yoo, count(baz.yoo) over (partition by foo.bar) as yoo_count  from foo, bar where foo.baz_id = baz.id and baz.id in (...) 

Alternatively:

SELECT foo.bar, baz.yoo, v.yoo_count  from foo, bar,  ( select foo.baz_id, count(*) as yoo_count   from foo   group by foo.baz_id ) as v where foo.baz_id = baz.id and baz.id in (...) and v.baz_id = foo.baz_id;