Question

I think I have a tough one here… 🙁

I am trying to get an order count by month, even when zero. Here’s the problem query:

SELECT datename(month, OrderDate) as Month, COUNT(OrderNumber) AS Orders
FROM OrderTable
WHERE OrderDate >= '2012-01-01' and OrderDate <= '2012-06-30'
GROUP BY year(OrderDate), month(OrderDate), datename(month, OrderDate)

What I’m looking to get is something like this:

Month            Orders
-----            ------
January          10
February         7
March            0
April            12
May              0
June             5

…but my query skips a row for March and May. I’ve tried COALESCE(COUNT(OrderNumber), 0) and ISNULL(COUNT(OrderNumber), 0) but I’m pretty sure the grouping is causing that not to work.

Answer 1

This solution doesn’t require you to hard-code the list of months you might want, all you need to do is provide any start date and any end date, and it will calculate the month boundaries for you. It includes year in the output so that it will support more than 12 months and so that your start and end dates can cross a year boundary and still order correctly and show the correct month and year.

DECLARE @StartDate SMALLDATETIME, @EndDate SMALLDATETIME;

SELECT @StartDate = '20120101', @EndDate = '20120630';

;WITH d(d) AS 
(
  SELECT DATEADD(MONTH, n, DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, @StartDate), 0))
  FROM ( SELECT TOP (DATEDIFF(MONTH, @StartDate, @EndDate) + 1) 
    n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY [object_id]) - 1
    FROM sys.all_objects ORDER BY [object_id] ) AS n
)
SELECT 
  [Month]    = DATENAME(MONTH, d.d), 
  [Year]     = YEAR(d.d), 
  OrderCount = COUNT(o.OrderNumber) 
FROM d LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.OrderTable AS o
  ON o.OrderDate >= d.d
  AND o.OrderDate < DATEADD(MONTH, 1, d.d)
GROUP BY d.d
ORDER BY d.d;