Question

Oracle has 2 functions – rank() and dense_rank() – which i’ve found very useful for some applications. I am doing something in mysql now and was wondering if they have something equivalent to those?

Answer 1

Nothing directly equivalent, but you can fake it with some (not terribly efficient) self-joins. Some sample code from a collection of MySQL query howtos:

SELECT v1.name, v1.votes, COUNT(v2.votes) AS Rank
FROM votes v1
JOIN votes v2 ON v1.votes < v2.votes OR (v1.votes=v2.votes and v1.name = v2.name)
GROUP BY v1.name, v1.votes
ORDER BY v1.votes DESC, v1.name DESC;
+-------+-------+------+
| name  | votes | Rank |
+-------+-------+------+
| Green |    50 |    1 |
| Black |    40 |    2 |
| White |    20 |    3 |
| Brown |    20 |    3 |
| Jones |    15 |    5 |
| Smith |    10 |    6 |
+-------+-------+------+