I ve got a table of temperature samples over time from several sources and I want to find the minimum, maximum, and average temperatures across all sources at set time intervals. At first glance this is easily done like so:
SELECT MIN(temp), MAX(temp), AVG(temp) FROM samples GROUP BY time;
However, things become much more complicated (to the point of where I m stumped!) if sources drop in and out and rather than ignoring the missing sources during the intervals in question I want to use the sources last know temperatures for the missing samples. Using datetimes and constructing intervals (say every minute) across samples unevenly distributed over time further complicates things.
I think it should be possible to create the results I want by doing a self-join on the samples table where the time from the first table is greater than or equal to the time of the second table and then calculating aggregate values for rows grouped by source. However, I m stumped about how to actually do this.
Here s my test table:
+------+------+------+
| time | source | temp |
+------+------+------+
| 1 | a | 20 |
| 1 | b | 18 |
| 1 | c | 23 |
| 2 | b | 21 |
| 2 | c | 20 |
| 2 | a | 18 |
| 3 | a | 16 |
| 3 | c | 13 |
| 4 | c | 15 |
| 4 | a | 4 |
| 4 | b | 31 |
| 5 | b | 10 |
| 5 | c | 16 |
| 5 | a | 22 |
| 6 | a | 18 |
| 6 | b | 17 |
| 7 | a | 20 |
| 7 | b | 19 |
+------+------+------+
INSERT INTO samples (time, source, temp) VALUES (1, a , 20), (1, b , 18), (1, c , 23), (2, b , 21), (2, c , 20), (2, a , 18), (3, a , 16), (3, c , 13), (4, c , 15), (4, a , 4), (4, b , 31), (5, b , 10), (5, c , 16), (5, a , 22), (6, a , 18), (6, b , 17), (7, a , 20), (7, b , 19);
To do my min, max and avg calculations, I want an intermediate table that looks like this:
+------+------+------+
| time | source | temp |
+------+------+------+
| 1 | a | 20 |
| 1 | b | 18 |
| 1 | c | 23 |
| 2 | b | 21 |
| 2 | c | 20 |
| 2 | a | 18 |
| 3 | a | 16 |
| 3 | b | 21 |
| 3 | c | 13 |
| 4 | c | 15 |
| 4 | a | 4 |
| 4 | b | 31 |
| 5 | b | 10 |
| 5 | c | 16 |
| 5 | a | 22 |
| 6 | a | 18 |
| 6 | b | 17 |
| 6 | c | 16 |
| 7 | a | 20 |
| 7 | b | 19 |
| 7 | c | 16 |
+------+------+------+
The following query is getting me close to what I want but it takes the temperature value of the source s first result, rather than the most recent one at the given time interval:
SELECT s.dt as sdt, s.mac, ss.temp, MAX(ss.dt) as maxdt FROM (SELECT DISTINCT dt FROM samples) AS s CROSS JOIN samples AS ss WHERE s.dt >= ss.dt GROUP BY sdt, mac HAVING maxdt <= s.dt ORDER BY sdt ASC, maxdt ASC;
+------+------+------+-------+
| sdt | mac | temp | maxdt |
+------+------+------+-------+
| 1 | a | 20 | 1 |
| 1 | c | 23 | 1 |
| 1 | b | 18 | 1 |
| 2 | a | 20 | 2 |
| 2 | c | 23 | 2 |
| 2 | b | 18 | 2 |
| 3 | b | 18 | 2 |
| 3 | a | 20 | 3 |
| 3 | c | 23 | 3 |
| 4 | a | 20 | 4 |
| 4 | c | 23 | 4 |
| 4 | b | 18 | 4 |
| 5 | a | 20 | 5 |
| 5 | c | 23 | 5 |
| 5 | b | 18 | 5 |
| 6 | c | 23 | 5 |
| 6 | a | 20 | 6 |
| 6 | b | 18 | 6 |
| 7 | c | 23 | 5 |
| 7 | b | 18 | 7 |
| 7 | a | 20 | 7 |
+------+------+------+-------+
Update: chadhoc (great name, by the way!) gives a nice solution that unfortunately does not work in MySQL, since it does not support the FULL JOIN
he uses. Luckily, I believe a simple UNION
is an effective replacement:
-- Unify the original samples with the missing values that we ve calculated
(
SELECT time, source, temp
FROM samples
)
UNION
( -- Pull all the time/source combinations that we are missing from the sample set, along with the temp
-- from the last sampled interval for the same time/source combination if we do not have one
SELECT a.time, a.source, (SELECT t2.temp FROM samples AS t2 WHERE t2.time < a.time AND t2.source = a.source ORDER BY t2.time DESC LIMIT 1) AS temp
FROM
( -- All values we want to get should be a cross of time/temp
SELECT t1.time, s1.source
FROM
(SELECT DISTINCT time FROM samples) AS t1
CROSS JOIN
(SELECT DISTINCT source FROM samples) AS s1
) AS a
LEFT JOIN samples s
ON a.time = s.time
AND a.source = s.source
WHERE s.source IS NULL
)
ORDER BY time, source;
Update 2: MySQL gives the following EXPLAIN
output for chadhoc s code:
+----+--------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+--------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+
| 1 | PRIMARY | temp | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | |
| 2 | UNION | <derived4> | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 21 | |
| 2 | UNION | s | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using where |
| 4 | DERIVED | <derived6> | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 3 | |
| 4 | DERIVED | <derived5> | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 7 | |
| 6 | DERIVED | temp | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using temporary |
| 5 | DERIVED | temp | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using temporary |
| 3 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | t2 | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using where; Using filesort |
| NULL | UNION RESULT | <union1,2> | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | Using filesort |
+----+--------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+
I was able to get Charles code working like so:
SELECT T.time, S.source,
COALESCE(
D.temp,
(
SELECT temp FROM samples
WHERE source = S.source AND time = (
SELECT MAX(time)
FROM samples
WHERE
source = S.source
AND time < T.time
)
)
) AS temp
FROM (SELECT DISTINCT time FROM samples) AS T
CROSS JOIN (SELECT DISTINCT source FROM samples) AS S
LEFT JOIN samples AS D
ON D.source = S.source AND D.time = T.time
Its explanation is:
+----+--------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+--------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------+
| 1 | PRIMARY | <derived5> | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 3 | |
| 1 | PRIMARY | <derived4> | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 7 | |
| 1 | PRIMARY | D | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | |
| 5 | DERIVED | temp | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using temporary |
| 4 | DERIVED | temp | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using temporary |
| 2 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | temp | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using where |
| 3 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | temp | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 18 | Using where |
+----+--------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------+