Sql – How to delete a fixed number of rows with sorting in PostgreSQL

postgresqlsql

I'm trying to port some old MySQL queries to PostgreSQL, but I'm having trouble with this one:

DELETE FROM logtable ORDER BY timestamp LIMIT 10;

PostgreSQL doesn't allow ordering or limits in its delete syntax, and the table doesn't have a primary key so I can't use a subquery. Additionally, I want to preserve the behavior where the query deletes exactly the given number or records — for example, if the table contains 30 rows but they all have the same timestamp, I still want to delete 10, although it doesn't matter which 10.

So; how do I delete a fixed number of rows with sorting in PostgreSQL?

Edit: No primary key means there's no log_id column or similar. Ah, the joys of legacy systems!

Best Answer

You could try using the ctid:

DELETE FROM logtable
WHERE ctid IN (
    SELECT ctid
    FROM logtable
    ORDER BY timestamp
    LIMIT 10
)

The ctid is:

The physical location of the row version within its table. Note that although the ctid can be used to locate the row version very quickly, a row's ctid will change if it is updated or moved by VACUUM FULL. Therefore ctid is useless as a long-term row identifier.

There's also oid but that only exists if you specifically ask for it when you create the table.

Related Solutions

Sql – How to concatenate text from multiple rows into a single text string in SQL Server

If you are on SQL Server 2017 or Azure, see Mathieu Renda answer.

I had a similar issue when I was trying to join two tables with one-to-many relationships. In SQL 2005 I found that XML PATH method can handle the concatenation of the rows very easily.

If there is a table called STUDENTS

SubjectID       StudentName
----------      -------------
1               Mary
1               John
1               Sam
2               Alaina
2               Edward

Result I expected was:

SubjectID       StudentName
----------      -------------
1               Mary, John, Sam
2               Alaina, Edward

I used the following T-SQL:

SELECT Main.SubjectID,
       LEFT(Main.Students,Len(Main.Students)-1) As "Students"
FROM
    (
        SELECT DISTINCT ST2.SubjectID, 
            (
                SELECT ST1.StudentName + ',' AS [text()]
                FROM dbo.Students ST1
                WHERE ST1.SubjectID = ST2.SubjectID
                ORDER BY ST1.SubjectID
                FOR XML PATH ('')
            ) [Students]
        FROM dbo.Students ST2
    ) [Main]

You can do the same thing in a more compact way if you can concat the commas at the beginning and use substring to skip the first one so you don't need to do a sub-query:

SELECT DISTINCT ST2.SubjectID, 
    SUBSTRING(
        (
            SELECT ','+ST1.StudentName  AS [text()]
            FROM dbo.Students ST1
            WHERE ST1.SubjectID = ST2.SubjectID
            ORDER BY ST1.SubjectID
            FOR XML PATH ('')
        ), 2, 1000) [Students]
FROM dbo.Students ST2

Sql – How to limit the number of rows returned by an Oracle query after ordering

You can use a subquery for this like

select *
from  
( select * 
  from emp 
  order by sal desc ) 
where ROWNUM <= 5;

Have also a look at the topic On ROWNUM and limiting results at Oracle/AskTom for more information.

Update: To limit the result with both lower and upper bounds things get a bit more bloated with

select * from 
( select a.*, ROWNUM rnum from 
  ( <your_query_goes_here, with order by> ) a 
  where ROWNUM <= :MAX_ROW_TO_FETCH )
where rnum  >= :MIN_ROW_TO_FETCH;

(Copied from specified AskTom-article)

Update 2: Starting with Oracle 12c (12.1) there is a syntax available to limit rows or start at offsets.

SELECT * 
FROM   sometable
ORDER BY name
OFFSET 20 ROWS FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;

See this answer for more examples. Thanks to Krumia for the hint.

Best Answer

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Sql – How to concatenate text from multiple rows into a single text string in SQL Server

Sql – How to limit the number of rows returned by an Oracle query after ordering

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