Numbering Functions in Standard SQL

The following sections describe the numbering functions that BigQuery supports. Numbering functions are a subset of analytic functions. For an explanation of how analytic functions work, see Analytic Function Concepts. For a description of how numbering functions work, see the Numbering Function Concepts.

OVER clause requirements:

• PARTITION BY: Optional.
• ORDER BY: Required, except for ROW_NUMBER().
• window_frame_clause: Disallowed.

RANK

Description

Returns the ordinal (1-based) rank of each row within the ordered partition. All peer rows receive the same rank value. The next row or set of peer rows receives a rank value which increments by the number of peers with the previous rank value, instead of DENSE_RANK, which always increments by 1.

Supported Argument Types

INT64

DENSE_RANK

Description

Returns the ordinal (1-based) rank of each row within the window partition. All peer rows receive the same rank value, and the subsequent rank value is incremented by one.

Supported Argument Types

INT64

PERCENT_RANK

Description

Return the percentile rank of a row defined as (RK-1)/(NR-1), where RK is the RANK of the row and NR is the number of rows in the partition. Returns 0 if NR=1.

Supported Argument Types

FLOAT64

CUME_DIST

Description

Return the relative rank of a row defined as NP/NR. NP is defined to be the number of rows that either precede or are peers with the current row. NR is the number of rows in the partition.

Supported Argument Types

FLOAT64

NTILE

NTILE(constant_integer_expression)

Description

This function divides the rows into constant_integer_expression buckets based on row ordering and returns the 1-based bucket number that is assigned to each row. The number of rows in the buckets can differ by at most 1. The remainder values (the remainder of number of rows divided by buckets) are distributed one for each bucket, starting with bucket 1. If constant_integer_expression evaluates to NULL, 0 or negative, an error is provided.

Supported Argument Types

INT64

ROW_NUMBER

Description

Does not require the ORDER BY clause. Returns the sequential row ordinal (1-based) of each row for each ordered partition. If the ORDER BY clause is unspecified then the result is non-deterministic.

Supported Argument Types

INT64