Subqueries in the FROM statement

Data Manipulation in SQL

Mona Khalil

Data Scientist, Greenhouse Software

Subqueries in FROM

Restructure and transform your data
- Transforming data from long to wide before selecting
- Prefiltering data
Calculating aggregates of aggregates
- Which 3 teams has the highest average of home goals scored?
  1. Calculate the AVG for each team
  2. Get the 3 highest of the AVG values

FROM subqueries...

SELECT
  t.team_long_name AS team,
  AVG(m.home_goal) AS home_avg
FROM match AS m
LEFT JOIN team AS t
ON m.hometeam_id = t.team_api_id
WHERE season = '2011/2012'
GROUP BY team;

| team                 | home_avg         |
|----------------------|------------------|
| 1. FC Köln           | 1.13725490196078 |
| 1. FC Nürnberg       | 1.27058823529412 |
| 1. FSV Mainz 05      | 1.43697478991597 |
| AC Ajaccio           | 1.12280701754386 |

...to main queries!


FROM (SELECT
          t.team_long_name AS team,
          AVG(m.home_goal) AS home_avg
      FROM match AS m
      LEFT JOIN team AS t
      ON m.hometeam_id = t.team_api_id
      WHERE season = '2011/2012'
      GROUP BY team)

...to main queries!


FROM (SELECT
          t.team_long_name AS team,
          AVG(m.home_goal) AS home_avg
      FROM match AS m
      LEFT JOIN team AS t
      ON m.hometeam_id = t.team_api_id
      WHERE season = '2011/2012'
      GROUP BY team) AS subquery

...to main queries!

SELECT team, home_avg
FROM (SELECT
          t.team_long_name AS team,
          AVG(m.home_goal) AS home_avg
      FROM match AS m
      LEFT JOIN team AS t
      ON m.hometeam_id = t.team_api_id
      WHERE season = '2011/2012'
      GROUP BY team) AS subquery

...to main queries!

SELECT team, home_avg
FROM (SELECT
          t.team_long_name AS team,
          AVG(m.home_goal) AS home_avg
      FROM match AS m
      LEFT JOIN team AS t
      ON m.hometeam_id = t.team_api_id
      WHERE season = '2011/2012'
      GROUP BY team) AS subquery
ORDER BY home_avg DESC
LIMIT 3;

| team           | home_avg |
|----------------|----------|
| FC Barcelona   | 3.8421   |
| Real Madrid CF | 3.6842   |
| PSV            | 3.3529   |

Things to remember

You can create multiple subqueries in one FROM statement
- Alias them!
- Join them!
You can join a subquery to a table in FROM
- Include a joining columns in both tables!

Let's practice!

Data Manipulation in SQL