Re: getting the nearest number from a column

On 10 avr, 19:44, Mladen Gogala <mgogala.SPAM-ME...._at_verizon.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 10:25:40 -0700, hasta_l3 wrote:
> > On 10 avr, 18:39, Mladen Gogala <mgogala.SPAM-ME...._at_verizon.net> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:56:06 -0700, hasta_l3 wrote:
> >> > Would you mean a bug in Oracle (documentation), Mladen ?
>
> >> > Granted, this area is somewhat tricky, but I don't see a bug here,
> >> > for my understanding is :
>
> >> > - RANK is a ranking function, that is computed for the whole
> >> > group/partition
>
> >> Find me a mention that this is a windowing
> >> function:http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/
> b14200/
> >> functions087.htm#i1280029
>
> > Well, MIN is so classified in the database warehousing guide :
>
> > http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14223/
>
> analysis.htm#i1014372
>
>
>
> > The windowing behavior is demonstrated in the analytic example of the
> > page you refer to above
>
> Demonstration is not enough. Second, min as a windowing function makes
> no sense. This is such an important feature that it was a must to mention
> it. Who would be interested in "local minimum". Minimum should be returned
> for the whole partition, which is, in this case, the entire table. This
> is, at the very least, a documentation bug. In my opinion, it is also a
> software bug as "local minimum" makes no sense, at least not to me.
> Windowing functions make sense for lag and lead, but not for "min" or
> "max". As for the data warehouse guide, SQL functions are documented in
> SQL reference. That is where one should look.
>

Mladen, I agree that one may be surprised by the behavior of MIN, and I
agree that the documentation could be improved, to say the least.

However, I do not agree that there is a documentation bug stricto sensu, for
the reference of MIN explicitly requests to look at "Analytic Functions" for
semantic, which in turns requests to look at the database warehouse guide.

I cannot either share your opinion that it is a software bug, for I believe that
SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, COUNT, VARIANCE, STDDEV all compute important properties of a moving window.

BTW, how did you expect MIN() to work, exactly ? Received on Tue Apr 10 2007 - 14:34:40 CDT