How to Efficiently Retrieve a Row's Position in a MySQL ORDER BY Clause?

Efficiently obtain row position in MySQL ORDER BY clause

Sorting of data in database tables provides a structured view of records. However, sometimes it is necessary to determine the position of a specific row in the sorted results. This article explores how to achieve this using the ORDER BY clause in MySQL and provides an optimized solution for retrieving a single row and its location.

Problem Statement:

Consider a MySQL table named "tbl" which contains two columns: "id" and "name". When sorted by the "name" column in ascending order, the table data looks like this:

<code>+-----------+--------------------+
| id         | name               |
+-----------+--------------------+
| 5          | Alpha              |
| 7          | Beta               |
| 3          | Delta              |
| ...        | ...                |
| 1          | Zed                |
+-----------+--------------------+</code>

Target:

The goal is to retrieve the "Beta" row from the sorted table and its position in the result set. The desired output should be:

<code>+-----------+-------------+--------------+
| id         | position    | name        |
+-----------+-------------+--------------+
| 7          |             2 | Beta        |
+-----------+-------------+--------------+</code>

Option 1: Optimized query

To retrieve the position of a specific row in the ORDER BY clause, we can use a subquery to assign row numbers incrementally based on the sort order. The following query effectively achieves this:

<code class="language-sql">SELECT x.id, 
       x.position,
       x.name
  FROM (SELECT t.id,
               t.name,
               @rownum := @rownum + 1 AS position
          FROM tbl t
          JOIN (SELECT @rownum := 0) r
      ORDER BY t.name) x
 WHERE x.name = 'Beta'</code>

In this query, we create a subquery (enclosed in parentheses) that uses a user-defined variable (@rownum) to assign incrementing row numbers. Do a JOIN with a virtual table initialized with @rownum := 0, making sure the numbers start at 1. The WHERE clause filters the results to retrieve only rows with the name "Beta".

Option 2: Alternative query

The following alternative query can be formulated to obtain the location:

<code class="language-sql">SELECT t.id,
       (SELECT COUNT(*)
          FROM tbl x
         WHERE x.name < t.name) + 1 AS position,
       t.name
  FROM tbl t
 WHERE t.name = 'Beta';</code>

Unlike scenario one, this query calculates the position by counting the number of rows with the same name or less than the target name. However, it is important to note that this approach may result in duplication of rows with the same name, assigning them the same position value.

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