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12.11.3. GROUP BY with Hidden Fields

MySQL extends the use of GROUP BY so that you can use columns or calculations in the SELECT list that do not appear in the GROUP BY clause. This stands for “any possible value for this group.” You can use this to get better performance by avoiding sorting and grouping on unnecessary items. For example, you do not need to group on customer.name in the following query:

SELECT order.custid, customer.name, MAX(payments)
  FROM order,customer
  WHERE order.custid = customer.custid
  GROUP BY order.custid;

In standard SQL, you would have to add customer.name to the GROUP BY clause. In MySQL, the name is redundant if you do not run with the ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY SQL mode enabled.

Do not use this feature if the columns you omit from the GROUP BY part are not unique in the group! You get unpredictable results.

In some cases, you can use MIN() and MAX() to obtain a specific column value even if it isn't unique. The following gives the value of column from the row containing the smallest value in the sort column:

SUBSTR(MIN(CONCAT(RPAD(sort,6,' '),column)),7)

See Section 3.6.4, “The Rows Holding the Group-wise Maximum of a Certain Field”.

Note that if you are trying to follow standard SQL, you can't use expressions in GROUP BY clauses. You can work around this limitation by using an alias for the expression:

SELECT id,FLOOR(value/100) AS val
  FROM tbl_name
  GROUP BY id, val;

MySQL does allow expressions in GROUP BY clauses. For example:

SELECT id,FLOOR(value/100)
  FROM tbl_name
  GROUP BY id, FLOOR(value/100);

 
 
  Published under the terms of the GNU General Public License Design by Interspire