Thanks for the suggestions Chris (and Chris). After a bit more investigation I stumbled upon the Window functions. The approach below turned out to be much more efficient that a function or self join approach. The SQL that I used is provided below (event_id and mmsi uniquely identify a vessel transit for which I wished to compute how much time had elapsed between successive records):
SELECT a.event_id, a.mmsi, (a.epoch - lag(epoch) OVER (PARTITION BY event_id, mmsi ORDER BY epoch ASC))/60 AS elapsed FROM dmas_ais a Jeff From: ccur...@gmail.com [mailto:ccur...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Chris Curvey Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2011 10:55 PM To: Jeff Adams Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [GENERAL] SQL Help - Finding Next Lowest Value of Current Row Value On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Jeff Adams <jeff.ad...@noaa.gov> wrote: Greetings, I have a large table (~19 million records). Records contains a field identifying a vessel and a field containing an time (epoch). Using the current rows vessel and time values, I need to be able to find the next lowest time value for the vessel and use it to compute how much time has elapsed between the records. I have tried a scalar subquery in the SELECT, which works, but it runs quite slowly. Is there an alternative approach that might perform better for this type of query. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks... Jeff Would a self-join with a MAX() help, like this? (Where "v" is your vessel_id and "e" is your time value?) create table stuff ( v int , e timestamp ); insert into stuff (v, e) values (1, '1/1/2011'); insert into stuff (v, e) values (1, '1/2/2011'); insert into stuff (v, e) values (1, '1/3/2011'); insert into stuff (v, e) values (2, '2/1/2011'); insert into stuff (v, e) values (2, '2/2/2011'); select a.v, a.e, max(b.e), a.e - max(b.e) from stuff a join stuff b on a.v = b.v where a.e > b.e group by a.v, a.e I don't have a multi-million row table handy, but I'd be interested to hear your results. -- e-Mail is the equivalent of a postcard written in pencil. This message may not have been sent by me, or intended for you. It may have been read or even modified while in transit. e-Mail disclaimers have the same force in law as a note passed in study hall. If your corporate attorney says that you need an disclaimer in your signature, you need a new corporate attorney.
