Concat GROUP BY in Vertica SQL

Question

I need to get a comma separated list of ids as a field for a messy third party api :s This is a simplified version of what I am trying to achieve.

| id | name |
|====|======|
| 01 | greg |
| 02 | paul |
| 03 | greg |
| 04 | greg |
| 05 | paul |

SELECT name, {some concentration function} AS ids
FROM table
GROUP BY name

Returning

| name | ids        |
|======|============|
| greg | 01, 03, 04 |
| paul | 02, 05     |

I know MySQL has the CONCAT_GROUP function and I was hoping to solve this problem without installing more functions because of the environment. Maybe I can solve this problem using an OVER statement?

Answer 1

You'll have to use OVER() with NVL() (you'll have to extend the concatenation for more than 10 instances per name):

CREATE TABLE t1 (
  id int,
  name varchar(10)
);

INSERT INTO t1
SELECT 1 AS id, 'greg' AS name
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'paul'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'greg'
UNION ALL
SELECT 4, 'greg'
UNION ALL
SELECT 5, 'paul';

COMMIT;

SELECT name,
    MAX(DECODE(row_number, 1, a.id)) ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 2, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 3, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 4, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 5, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 6, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 7, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 8, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 9, ',' || a.id)), '') ||
    NVL(MAX(DECODE(row_number, 10, ',' || a.id)), '') id
FROM
    (SELECT name, id, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY name ORDER BY id) row_number FROM t1) a
GROUP BY a.name
ORDER BY a.name;

Result

 name |  id
------+-------
 greg | 1,3,4
 paul | 2,5