Sunday, November 30, 2008

SQL Tips & Techniques- Correlated Reference

Sometimes even a simple SQL query may become challenging if we don’t approach it with a right technique. Few months ago I came across one such SQL query problem that I am going to share in this post. I was writing a database monitoring routine using snapshot table function. For simplicity, let’s consider the following query:

Listing 1

The above query will give the log used and available on partition 0, because the second argument is 0 in the snapshot_database table function. I had to collect the above info on each partition and using db2_all was not an option because the SQL was supposed to run through a JDBC connection. My first instinct was to find the list of partitions using following query and then run the query in Listing 1 in a loop for each partition

Listing 2


However, I wanted to have a single SQL query to get the complete result as shown below:

Listing 3

The problem appeared to be easy in the beginning, but it started becoming difficult as I thought over it and could not come up with the SQL query. Then I thought of checking the complete syntax of DB2 SQL query in DB2 SQL Reference to make sure I am not missing any syntax that can help with this problem. And I was indeed missing something. It was Correlated Reference, which can also be used in arguments of table function.

Most likely you might already be familiar with the Correlated Subquery and Correlation Name. Even if these terms do not sound familiar, I am sure you must have used them in your SQL. Let’s look at an example to make it clear


Listing 4

In the above query, notice the use of x.workdept inside the subquery. The employee table in the FROM clause of parent query has correlation name x. Though x is not present in the FROM clause of subquery, still x.workdept is used in the WHERE clause of subquery. This is called correlated subquery. In the above example, both the parent and subquery has employee table. However, subquery may have completely different tables and still it can use the columns from the parent table. Correlated subquery can also appear in SELECT and HAVING clause as shown below

Listing 5


Correlated reference can also be used in nested table expression as shown below

Listing 6

Above example has a nested table expression empinfo. Notice the use of d.deptno in the query of nested table expression empinfo.

As I mentioned earlier, correlated reference can also be used in the arguments of a table function and this helped me to get the solution of my SQL problem. The following SQL will give the result I wanted

Listing 7

In the above query, x.partition_number is used in the argument of snapshot_database table function. Changing the order of db_partitions and snapshot_database table functions in the FROM clause of above query will result in error because table references in a FROM clause are processed from left to right and x.partition_number must be resolved before it’s used in the argument of snapshot_database table function. The same rule applies with correlated subquery as well. The correlated reference must be from a table reference at a higher level in the hierarchy of subqueries.