Oracle Analytic Functions

Written by Saurav Mitra - Last Updated Friday, 30 April 2010 12:59

Oracle Analytic Functions compute an aggregate value based on a group of rows. It

opens up a whole new way of looking at the data. This article explains how we can unleash the
full potential of this.

Analytic functions differ from aggregate functions in the sense that they return multiple rows for
each group. The group of rows is called a window and is defined by the analytic clause. For
each row, a sliding window of rows is defined. The window determines the range of rows used
to perform the calculations for the current row.

Oracle provides many Analytic Functions such as

AVG, CORR, COVAR_POP, COVAR_SAMP, COUNT, CUME_DIST, DENSE_RANK, FIRST,
FIRST_VALUE, LAG, LAST, LAST_VALUE, LEAD, MAX, MIN, NTILE, PERCENT_RANK,
PERCENTILE_CONT, PERCENTILE_DISC, RANK, RATIO_TO_REPORT, STDDEV,
STDDEV_POP, STDDEV_SAMP, SUM, VAR_POP, VAR_SAMP, VARIANCE.

The Syntax of analytic functions: Analytic-Function(Column1,Column2,...) OVER (

[Query-Partition-Clause] [Order-By-Clause] [Windowing-Clause] )

Analytic functions take 0 to 3 arguments.

An Example:
SELECT ename, deptno, sal,
SUM(sal)
OVER (ORDER BY deptno, ename) AS Running_Total,
SUM(sal)
OVER ( PARTITION BY deptno
ORDER BY ename) AS Dept_Total,
ROW_NUMBER()
OVER (PARTITION BY deptno
ORDER BY ename) As Sequence_No
FROM emp
ORDER BY deptno, ename;

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Oracle Analytic Functions

Written by Saurav Mitra - Last Updated Friday, 30 April 2010 12:59

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