RE: SQL question

  • From: "Lex de Haan" <lex.de.haan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <jhn.aida@xxxxxx>, <geraldine_2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 18:58:22 +0100

Hah -- comments ... Thanks for challenging me, Jesper :-)
Well, my first thought (when I saw this question) was: what are these
columns A and B supposed to mean in real world, to make this type of
questions "reasonable" in the first place? In other words, aren't we looking
at a design mistake here? How can you have two columns that apparently have
precisely the same meaning?

And another question: what is the primary key of this table?

Relational, relational, ... Isn't a table just like a spreadsheet, with rows
and columns? :-)

Undskyld, undskyld,

Lex.
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Jesper Haure Norrevang
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 18:07
To: geraldine_2@xxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: SQL question

Geraldine,

select a, b
from mytable
where a <= b
union
select b, a
from mytable
where b = a

In Set Theory the set (1, 2) is equal to (2, 1).

Relational databases are (more and less) good implementations of Set Theory.
Basicly you are asking for a Set of Sets. Quite interesting. May be Lex has
some comments on this?

Regards
Jesper Haure


----- Original Message -----
From: geraldine_2@xxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Friday, December 3, 2004 5:37 pm
Subject: SQL question

> Hi,
> I have the following table below
> 
> SQL> select * FRom mytable;
>        A          B
> ---------- ----------
>         1          2
>         3          4
>         2          1
>         5          6
>         4          3
> 
> 5 rows selected.
> 
> and I like to get the following output:
> 
>        A          B
> ---------- ----------
>         1          2
>         3          4
>         5          6
>        
> 
> basically (1,2) is the same as (2,1) and I would just like to display 
> any of those combination just once.
> 
> Not sure how I can write a SQL to extract the data. Can someone help.
> 
> TIA.
> 
> Geraldine
> --
> //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
> 

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