Re: getting the nearest number from a column

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:05:16 -0700
Message-ID: <1176239110.65516@bubbleator.drizzle.com>

hasta_l3_at_hotmail.com wrote:
> 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 ?

I have forwarded this thread to the person that wrote the docs.

The fact that this discussion is taking place indicates there is some lack of clarity.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org

Received on Tue Apr 10 2007 - 16:05:16 CDT