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Asked: 2026-05-11T02:08:12+00:00

I’m trying to generate a sales reports which lists each product + total sales

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I’m trying to generate a sales reports which lists each product + total sales in a given month. Its a little tricky because the prices of products can change throughout the month. For example:

  • Between Jan-01 and Jan-15, my company sells 50 Widgets at a cost of $10 each
  • Between Jan-15 and Jan-31, my company sells 50 more Widgets at a cost of $15 each
  • The total sales of Widgets for January = (50 * 10) + (50 * 15) = $1250

This setup is represented in the database as follows:

 Sales table   Sale_ID    ProductID    Sale_Date   1          1            2009-01-01   2          1            2009-01-01   3          1            2009-01-02              ...   50         1            2009-01-15   51         1            2009-01-16   52         1            2009-01-17              ...   100        1            2009-01-31  Prices table   Product_ID    Sale_Date    Price   1             2009-01-01   10.00   1             2009-01-16   15.00

When a price is defined in the prices table, it is applied to all products sold with the given ProductID from the given SaleDate going forward.

Basically, I’m looking for a query which returns data as follows:

 Desired output   Sale_ID    ProductID    Sale_Date     Price   1          1            2009-01-01    10.00   2          1            2009-01-01    10.00   3          1            2009-01-02    10.00              ...   50         1            2009-01-15    10.00   51         1            2009-01-16    15.00   52         1            2009-01-17    15.00              ...   100        1            2009-01-31    15.00

I have the following query:

SELECT     Sale_ID,     Product_ID,     Sale_Date,     (         SELECT TOP 1 Price         FROM Prices         WHERE             Prices.Product_ID = Sales.Product_ID             AND Prices.Sale_Date < Sales.Sale_Date          ORDER BY Prices.Sale_Date DESC     ) as Price FROM Sales

This works, but is there a more efficient query than a nested sub-select?

And before you point out that it would just be easier to include ‘price’ in the Sales table, I should mention that the schema is maintained by another vendor and I’m unable to change it. And in case it matters, I’m using SQL Server 2000.

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1 Answer

  1. If you start storing start and end dates, or create a view that includes the start and end dates (you can even create an indexed view) then you can heavily simplify your query. (provided you are certain there are no range overlaps) 

    SELECT     Sale_ID,     Product_ID,     Sale_Date,     Price FROM Sales JOIN Prices on Sale_date > StartDate and Sale_Date <= EndDate   -- careful not to use between it includes both ends

    Note:

    A technique along these lines will allow you to do this with a view. Note, if you need to index the view, it will have to be juggled around quite a bit ..

    create table t (d datetime)  insert t values(getdate()) insert t values(getdate()+1) insert t values(getdate()+2)  go create view myview  as select start = isnull(max(t2.d), '1975-1-1'), finish = t1.d  from t t1 left join t t2 on t1.d > t2.d group by t1.d  select * from myview   start                   finish ----------------------- ----------------------- 1975-01-01 00:00:00.000 2009-01-27 11:12:57.383 2009-01-27 11:12:57.383 2009-01-28 11:12:57.383 2009-01-28 11:12:57.383 2009-01-29 11:12:57.383
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