Question

The following query refuses to work on Sql server whereas it runs fine on Oracle 10gR2.

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM (
   SELECT count(*)
   FROM MYTABLE
   WHERE id IS NOT NULL
   GROUP BY id
)

It ends up with this message :

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error '80040e14'

Ligne 7 : syntaxe incorrecte vers ')'. 

How can I make it compatible for both DBMS ?

Answer 1

SQL Server requires an alias on derived tables, so…

SELECT COUNT(*) 
FROM ( 
   SELECT count(*) 
   FROM TABLE 
   WHERE id IS NOT NULL 
   GROUP BY id 
)  a

I’m not sure how to do the alias in Oracle. Also, you’ll need to provide a column name for count(*) in the derived table.