The GROUPING SETS clause is an extension to the GROUP BY clause of a SELECT statement. The GROUPING SETS clause allows you to group your results multiple ways, without having to use multiple SELECT statements to do so. This means you can reduce response time and improve performance.

For example, the following two queries statements are semantically equivalent. However, the second query defines the grouping criteria more efficiently using a GROUP BY GROUPING SETS clause.

Multiple groupings using multiple SELECT statements:

SELECT NULL, NULL, NULL, COUNT( * ) AS Cnt
FROM Customers
WHERE State IN ( 'MB' , 'KS' )
   UNION ALL
SELECT City, State, NULL, COUNT( * ) AS Cnt
FROM Customers
WHERE State IN ( 'MB' , 'KS' )
GROUP BY City, State
   UNION ALL
SELECT NULL, NULL, CompanyName, COUNT( * ) AS Cnt
FROM Customers
WHERE State IN ( 'MB' , 'KS' )
GROUP BY CompanyName;

Multiple groupings using GROUPING SETS:

SELECT City, State, CompanyName, COUNT( * ) AS Cnt
FROM Customers
WHERE State IN ( 'MB' , 'KS' )
GROUP BY GROUPING SETS( ( City, State ), ( CompanyName ) , ( ) );

Both methods produce the same results, shown below:

Rows 2-9 are the rows generated by grouping over CompanyName, rows 10-12 are rows generated by grouping over the combination of City and State, and row 1 is the grand total represented by the empty grouping set, specified using a pair of matched parentheses (). The empty grouping set represents a single partition of all the rows in the input to the GROUP BY.

Notice how NULL values are used as placeholders for any expression that is not used in a grouping set, because the result sets must be combinable. For example, rows 2-9 result from the second grouping set in the query (CompanyName). Since that grouping set did not include City or State as expressions, for rows 2-9 the values for City and State contain the placeholder NULL, while the values in CompanyName contain the distinct values found in CompanyName.

Because NULLs as used as placeholders, it is easy to confuse placeholder NULLs with actual NULLs found in the data. To help distinguish placeholder NULLs from NULL data, use the GROUPING function. See Detecting placeholder NULLs using the GROUPING function.

Example

The following example shows how you can tailor the results that are returned from a query using GROUPING SETS, and an ORDER BY clause to better organize the results. The query returns the total number of orders by Quarter in each Year, and a total for each Year. Ordering by Year and then Quarter makes the results easier to understand:

SELECT Year( OrderDate ) AS Year, 
        Quarter( OrderDate ) AS Quarter, 
        COUNT (*) AS Orders 
FROM SalesOrders
GROUP BY GROUPING SETS ( ( Year, Quarter ), ( Year ) )
ORDER BY Year, Quarter;

This query returns the following results:

Rows 1 and 6 are subtotals of orders for Year 2000 and Year 2001, respectively. Rows 2-5 and rows 7-9 are the detail rows for the subtotal rows. That is, they show the total orders per quarter, per year.

There is no grand total for all quarters in all years in the result set. To do that, the query must include the empty grouping specification '()' in the GROUPING SETS specification.

Specifying an empty grouping specification

If you use an empty GROUPING SETS specification '()' in the GROUP BY clause, this results in a grand total row for all things that are being totaled in the results. With a grand total row, all values for all grouping expressions contain placeholder NULLs. You can use the GROUPING function to distinguish placeholder NULLs from actual NULLs resulting from the evaluation of values in the underlying data for the row. See Detecting placeholder NULLs using the GROUPING function.

Specifying duplicate grouping sets

You can specify duplicate grouping specifications in a GROUPING SETS clause. In this case, the result of the SELECT statement contains identical rows.

The following query includes duplicate groupings:

SELECT City, COUNT( * ) AS Cnt
FROM Customers
WHERE State IN ( 'MB' , 'KS' )
GROUP BY GROUPING SETS( ( City ), ( City ) );

This query returns the following results. Note that as a result of the duplicate groupings, rows 1-3 are identical to rows 4-6:

Practicing good form

Grouping syntax is interpreted differently for a GROUP BY GROUPING SETS clause than it is for a simple GROUP BY clause. For example, GROUP BY (X, Y) returns results grouped by distinct combinations of X and Y values. However, GROUP BY GROUPING SETS (X, Y) specifies two individual grouping sets, and the result of the two groupings are UNIONed together. That is, results are grouped by (X), and then unioned to the same results grouped by (Y).

For good form, and to avoid any ambiguity in the case of complex expressions, use parentheses around each individual grouping set in the specification whenever there is a possibility for error. For example, while both of the following statements are correct and semantically equivalent, the second one reflects the recommended form:

SELECT * FROM t GROUP BY GROUPING SETS ( X, Y );
SELECT * FROM t GROUP BY GROUPING SETS( ( X ), ( Y ) );