GROUPING

Name

GROUPING

Description

Indicates whether a specified column expression in a GROUP BY list is aggregated or not. GROUPING returns 1 for aggregated or 0 for not aggregated in the result set. GROUPING can be used only in the SELECT <select> list, HAVING, and ORDER BY clauses when GROUP BY is specified.

GROUPING is used to distinguish the null values that are returned by ROLLUP, CUBE or GROUPING SETS from standard null values. The NULL returned as the result of a ROLLUP, CUBE or GROUPING SETS operation is a special use of NULL. This acts as a column placeholder in the result set and means all.

GROUPING( <column_expression> )

<column_expression> Is a column or an expression that contains a column in a GROUP BY clause.

Return Types: BIGINT

Example

The following example groups camp and aggregates occupation amounts in the database. The GROUPING function is applied to the camp column.

CREATE TABLE `roles` (
  role_id       INT,
  occupation    VARCHAR(32),
  camp          VARCHAR(32),
  register_time DATE
)
UNIQUE KEY(role_id)
DISTRIBUTED BY HASH(role_id) BUCKETS 1
PROPERTIES (
  "replication_allocation" = "tag.location.default: 1"
);
 
INSERT INTO `roles` VALUES
(0, 'who am I', NULL, NULL),
(1, 'mage', 'alliance', '2018-12-03 16:11:28'),
(2, 'paladin', 'alliance', '2018-11-30 16:11:28'),
(3, 'rogue', 'horde', '2018-12-01 16:11:28'),
(4, 'priest', 'alliance', '2018-12-02 16:11:28'),
(5, 'shaman', 'horde', NULL),
(6, 'warrior', 'alliance', NULL),
(7, 'warlock', 'horde', '2018-12-04 16:11:28'),
(8, 'hunter', 'horde', NULL);
 
SELECT 
  camp, 
  COUNT(occupation) AS 'occ_cnt',
  GROUPING(camp)    AS 'grouping'
FROM
   `roles`
GROUP BY
  ROLLUP(camp); -- CUBE(camp) and GROUPING SETS((camp)) also can work;

The result set shows two null value under camp. The first NULL is in the summary row added by the ROLLUP operation. The summary row shows the occupation counts for all camp groups and is indicated by 1 in the Grouping column. The second NULL represents the group of null values from this column in the table.

Here is the result set.

+----------+---------+----------+
| camp     | occ_cnt | grouping |
+----------+---------+----------+
| NULL     |       9 |        1 |
| NULL     |       1 |        0 |
| alliance |       4 |        0 |
| horde    |       4 |        0 |
+----------+---------+----------+
4 rows in set (0.01 sec)

Keywords

GROUPING

Best Practice

See also GROUPING_ID