ORA-00979 not a group by expression

Question

I am getting ORA-00979 with the following query:

SELECT cr.review_sk, cr.cs_sk, cr.full_name,
tolist(to_char(cf.fact_date, 'mm/dd/yyyy')) "appt",
cs.cs_id, cr.tracking_number
from review cr, cs, fact cf
where cr.cs_sk = cs.cs_sk
and UPPER(cs.cs_id) like '%' || UPPER(i_cs_id) || '%'
and row_delete_date_time is null
and cr.review_sk = cf.review_wk (+)
and cr.fact_type_code (+) = 183050
GROUP BY cr.review_sk, cr.cs_sk, cf.fact_date, cr.tracking_number
ORDER BY cs.cs_id, cr.full_name;

I couldn't find any examples that had both GROUP BY and ORDER BY clauses in the same query. I tried removing each field from the group by one at a time, but am still getting the same error.

Answer 1

You must put all columns of the SELECT in the GROUP BY or use functions on them which compress the results to a single value (like MIN, MAX or SUM).

A simple example to understand why this happens: Imagine you have a database like this:

FOO BAR
0   A
0   B

and you run SELECT * FROM table GROUP BY foo. This means the database must return a single row as result with the first column 0 to fulfill the GROUP BY but there are now two values of bar to chose from. Which result would you expect - A or B? Or should the database return more than one row, violating the contract of GROUP BY?