Re: using alias in where clause

Larry Martell <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.db.mysql.general
Message-ID <CACwCsY6JB4SBiwmDZFY=3Sv9ppf1uoqh7yJq3+7eMQX53ak5FA@mail.gmail.com>
On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 2:13 PM, shawn l.green <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> On 1/28/2016 1:14 PM, Larry Martell wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Hal.sz S.ndor <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> 2016/01/25 19:16 ... Larry Martell:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> SELECT IFNULL(f_tag_bottom,
>>>>                   IFNULL(f_tag_bottom_major_axis,
>>>>                    IFNULL(f_tag_bottom_minor_axis,
>>>>                     IFNULL(f_tag_ch_x_bottom,
>>>>                      IFNULL(f_tag_ch_y_bottom, NULL))))) as ftag,
>>>>                  STDDEV(ch_x_top)
>>>> ....
>>>
>>>
>>> Of course, this isn't your real problem, but you could use COALESCE
>>> instead
>>> of all those IFNULLs (and you don't need the last one):
>>>          SELECT COALESCE(f_tag_bottom, f_tag_bottom_major_axis,
>>> f_tag_bottom_minor_axis, f_tag_ch_x_bottom, f_tag_ch_y_bottom) as ftag,
>>>                  STDDEV(ch_x_top)
>>>          ....
>>>
>>> As Johnny Withers points out, you may repeat the expression in the
>>> WHERE-clause:
>>>          WHERE COALESCE(f_tag_bottom, f_tag_bottom_major_axis,
>>> f_tag_bottom_minor_axis, f_tag_ch_x_bottom, f_tag_ch_y_bottom) = 'E-CD7'
>>> If really only one of those is not NULL, it is equivalent to this:
>>>          'E-CD7' IN (f_tag_bottom, f_tag_bottom_major_axis,
>>> f_tag_bottom_minor_axis, f_tag_ch_x_bottom, f_tag_ch_y_bottom)
>>
>>
>> Many thanks to Hal.sz and Johnny - I had forgotten about coalesce and
>> I didn't know I could use that in a where clause. This worked great
>> for the requirement I had, but of course, once that was implemented my
>> client changed the requirements. Now they want to know which of the 5
>> f_tag_* columns was matched. Not sure how I'll do that. Probably need
>> another query.
>>
> One option to consider is to add another column to the query with a CASE
> similar to this...
>
> SELECT
> , ... original fields ...
> , CASE
>   WHEN f_tag_bottom THEN 'f_tag_bottom'
>   WHEN f_tag_bottom_major_axis THEN 'f_tag_bottom_major_axis'
>   ... repeat for the rest of the fields to test ...
>   ELSE 'none'
>   END as match_flag
> FROM ...
>
> Technically, the term in the WHERE clause should prevent a 'none' result but
> I put it there to help future-proof the code.

Won't that find the first one of the f_tags that is not null, but not
necessarily the one that was matched by the where clause?

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