Using the SQL GROUP BY clause for counting combinations
Read SQL expert Rudy Limeback's advice for counting combinations in a table with SQL's GROUP BY clause
I am running a market survey and all the survey data is saved in the database. I need a query for counting the number of rows in which option "1" is selected for question "1," option "2" for question "1" and so on for all questions and options. I need to specify a few conditions here. I have to match distinct IDs of three tables and display the result for each particular ID.
You've given very little information about your tables, so the following solution explains how to get the counts without going into details about how your tables are joined.
SELECT x.question_number
, y.option_number
, COUNT(*) AS number_of_rows
FROM your joins go here
GROUP
BY x.question_number
, y.option_number
The count that is produced for this particular GROUP BY clause is the count for every single unique combination of question_number and option_number values.
The only wrinkle on the solution is if certain option numbers were not chosen. You cannot count what's not there, if you're using an INNER JOIN; a LEFT OUTER JOIN should be used instead. But I cannot give you a sample query because I don't know what your three tables look like.
