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Pivot tables 🧮

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One of Excel's most awesome features is pivot tables -- and SQL has them, too (at least, most flavours)!

Note

The ROLLUP modifier is optional. If you use it, it must be part of the GROUP BY clause.

We use the ROLLUP modifier to create "pivot tables"

In the aggregations section, we saw that we can use the GROUP BY clause to group rows together and summarise them.

This is handy but, unlike Excel's pivot tables, it doesn't include subtotals and grand totals.

To tell SQL to include these totals, we use the ROLLUP modifier! This modifier goes immediately after the GROUP BY text, and the grouping columns are listed in brackets.

For example, consider the following query which produces six months of sales summaries:

SELECT
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM') AS OrderMonth,
    SUM(TotalDue) AS TotalSales
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE '2013-01-01' <= OrderDate AND OrderDate < '2013-07-01'
GROUP BY FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM')
ORDER BY OrderMonth
;
OrderMonth TotalSales
2013-01 2340061.5521
2013-02 2600218.8667
2013-03 3831605.9389
2013-04 2840711.1734
2013-05 3658084.9461
2013-06 5726265.2635

We could use ROLLUP to add a grand total to the results:

SELECT
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM') AS OrderMonth,
    SUM(TotalDue) AS TotalSales
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE '2013-01-01' <= OrderDate AND OrderDate < '2013-07-01'
GROUP BY ROLLUP (FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM'))
ORDER BY OrderMonth
;
OrderMonth TotalSales
null 20996947.7407
2013-01 2340061.5521
2013-02 2600218.8667
2013-03 3831605.9389
2013-04 2840711.1734
2013-05 3658084.9461
2013-06 5726265.2635

Note that the OrderMonth column now includes a NULL value, which represents the grand total.

This query only groups by a single column, so there are no subtotals (only the grand total). If we were to group by multiple columns, we would see subtotals for each combination of the grouping columns.

For example, we could extend the example above (without the ROLLUP modifier) to also group by the OnlineOrderFlag column:

SELECT
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM') AS OrderMonth,
    OnlineOrderFlag,
    SUM(TotalDue) AS TotalSales
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE '2013-01-01' <= OrderDate AND OrderDate < '2013-07-01'
GROUP BY
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM'),
    OnlineOrderFlag
ORDER BY
    OrderMonth,
    OnlineOrderFlag
;
OrderMonth OnlineOrderFlag TotalSales
2013-01 false 1761132.8322
2013-01 true 578928.7199
2013-02 false 2101152.5476
2013-02 true 499066.3191
2013-03 false 3244501.4287
2013-03 true 587104.5102
2013-04 false 2239156.6675
2013-04 true 601554.5059
2013-05 false 3019173.6253
2013-05 true 638911.3208
2013-06 false 4775809.3027
2013-06 true 950455.9608

Adding the ROLLUP modifier to the GROUP BY clause will add subtotals for the order months and a grand total:

SELECT
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM') AS OrderMonth,
    OnlineOrderFlag,
    SUM(TotalDue) AS TotalSales
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE '2013-01-01' <= OrderDate AND OrderDate < '2013-07-01'
GROUP BY ROLLUP (
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM'),
    OnlineOrderFlag
)
ORDER BY
    OrderMonth,
    OnlineOrderFlag
;
OrderMonth OnlineOrderFlag TotalSales
null null 20996947.7407
2013-01 null 2340061.5521
2013-01 false 1761132.8322
2013-01 true 578928.7199
2013-02 null 2600218.8667
2013-02 false 2101152.5476
2013-02 true 499066.3191
2013-03 null 3831605.9389
2013-03 false 3244501.4287
2013-03 true 587104.5102
2013-04 null 2840711.1734
2013-04 false 2239156.6675
2013-04 true 601554.5059
2013-05 null 3658084.9461
2013-05 false 3019173.6253
2013-05 true 638911.3208
2013-06 null 5726265.2635
2013-06 false 4775809.3027
2013-06 true 950455.9608

Warning

Did you notice that there were subtotals for the order months, but no subtotals for the OnlineOrderFlag column? This is because, like with Excel's pivot tables, the order of the columns is significant!

If we switched the order of the columns in the GROUP BY clause, the subtotals for OnlineOrderFlag would be calculated but not the subtotals for the order months.

The subtotals that are generated follow the same rules as Excel's pivot tables.

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SQL has called this modifier "rollup" because it rolls up the values into subtotals and grand totals!

There's an alternative syntax: WITH ROLLUP

Instead of specifying ROLLUP immediately after the GROUP BY text and listing the grouping columns in brackets, we could instead just add the text WITH ROLLUP after the list of columns:

SELECT
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM') AS OrderMonth,
    SUM(TotalDue) AS TotalSales
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE '2013-01-01' <= OrderDate AND OrderDate < '2013-07-01'
GROUP BY FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM') WITH ROLLUP
ORDER BY OrderMonth
;

Although this syntax is supported, it's not the standard syntax to use and is only included for backwards compatibility.

You should stick to the standard syntax of adding ROLLUP immediately after the GROUP BY text and listing the grouping columns in brackets.

Further reading

Check out the official Microsoft documentation for more information on ROLLUP at:

The video version of this content is also available at:

Additional grouping functions

There are additional functions which are outside the scope of this course to distinguish between NULL values generated by the subtotals/grand totals and NULL values that are in the original data.

They are the GROUPING and GROUPING_ID functions which help identify which rows correspond to different levels of the ROLLUP hierarchy:

Error

This is a contrived example to show the additional grouping functions.

SELECT
    GROUPING(FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM')) AS IsOrderDateSubtotal,
    GROUPING(OnlineOrderFlag) AS IsOnlineOrderFlagSubtotal,
    GROUPING_ID(FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM'), OnlineOrderFlag) AS GroupingId,

    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM') AS OrderMonth,
    OnlineOrderFlag,
    SUM(TotalDue) AS TotalSales
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE '2013-01-01' <= OrderDate AND OrderDate < '2013-07-01'
GROUP BY ROLLUP (
    FORMAT(OrderDate, 'yyyy-MM'),
    OnlineOrderFlag
)
ORDER BY
    OrderMonth,
    OnlineOrderFlag
;