Multiple record counts in one SQL statement

By Bill Graziano on 14 August 2000 | 5 Comments | Tags: SELECT

Martin writes "Hi, I was wondering if it is possible to have more that one count function in one sql statement. Say something like: I would like to return how many times "reference" eq 1 and how many times "refenrece" eq 2, so i get two fields back, one counting the number of records where "reference" eq 1 and the other counting the number of records where "reference" eq 2. Thanks."

It certainly is possible. If you want to know how many times a given field contains a certain value you can use a GROUP BY clause. The code might look something like this:

SELECT Reference, Record_Count=Count(*)
FROM Table1
GROUP BY Reference

This will return one row per value with a count of how many times that value occured. You could use a WHERE clause to only display certain records. This does create a record set for you to loop through though. If you truly want one record with two values you can code something like this:

SELECT
Count_1=(SELECT Count(*) FROM Table1 WHERE Reference = 1),
Count_2=(SELECT Count(*) FROM Table1 WHERE Reference = 2)

Note that the outside SELECT has no table in it. It is simpy used to return the results from the two subqueries. In this scenario it is also possible to SELECT from different tables or use different fields to generate results. This solution works better the more complex the WHERE clauses are.

Discuss this article: 5 Comments so far. Print this Article. This page has been read 62,529 times.

If you like this article you can sign up for our newsletter. We send it out each week that we post a new article. There's an opt-out link at the bottom of each newsletter so it's easy to unsubscribe at any time.

Email Address:

Email This • Subscribe to this feed • Kick it • Save to del.icio.us • View blog reactions

Joining to the Next Sequential Row (2 April 2008)

Writing Outer Joins in T-SQL (11 February 2008)

How to Use GROUP BY with Distinct Aggregates and Derived tables (31 July 2007)

How to Use GROUP BY in SQL Server (30 July 2007)

SQL Server 2005: Using OVER() with Aggregate Functions (21 May 2007)

Server Side Paging using SQL Server 2005 (4 January 2007)

Using XQuery, New Large DataTypes, and More (9 May 2006)

Counting Parents and Children with Count Distinct (10 January 2006)

Subscribe to SQLTeam.com

Weekly SQL Server newsletter with articles, forum posts, and blog posts via email:

SQLTeam.com Articles via RSS

SQLTeam.com Weblog via RSS

- Advertisement -

- Sponsor's Message -

SQLShare.com Videos

Using DatePart and DateName

Ever want to get the month out of a date as a number, or as literal text? Many people will do it by parsing the date as a string, but we've got some built in functions that will do it cleanly and consistently.

Renaming a Database

You won't do it often, but it's nice to know how, and you're not still using sp_renamedb are you? Join us for a quick look at how to use the alter syntax to change the db name along with a tip on how to quickly disconnect any remaining users from the database.

File Share Subscriptions in Reporting Services

Whether you want to generate PDF invoices for customers or do a daily export that will get processed by one of your vendors, the ability to deliver reports to a file share is a useful and simple feature baked in to Reporting Services. In this lesson Devin will show you how to do it and how to set most of the common options.

File Share Subscriptions in Reporting Services

Using DB_ID and DB_Name Functions

Simple but effective, DB_ID and DB_Name give you a concise way to look up the id of a database from a name, or look up the name of a database from an id. There are times when you'll need to write the join to sys.sysdatabases, but when all you need is a quick conversion, these functions get it done.