Aggregate functions in Google Standard SQL

An aggregate function is a function that summarizes the rows of a group into a single value. COUNT, MIN and MAX are examples of aggregate functions.

SELECT COUNT(*) as total_count, COUNT(fruit) as non_null_count,
       MIN(fruit) as min, MAX(fruit) as max
FROM (SELECT NULL as fruit UNION ALL
      SELECT "apple" as fruit UNION ALL
      SELECT "pear" as fruit UNION ALL
      SELECT "orange" as fruit)

+-------------+----------------+-------+------+
| total_count | non_null_count | min   | max  |
+-------------+----------------+-------+------+
| 4           | 3              | apple | pear |
+-------------+----------------+-------+------+

When used in conjunction with a GROUP BY clause, the groups summarized typically have at least one row. When the associated SELECT has no GROUP BY clause or when certain aggregate function modifiers filter rows from the group to be summarized it is possible that the aggregate function needs to summarize an empty group. In this case, the COUNT and COUNTIF functions return 0, while all other aggregate functions return NULL.

The following sections describe the aggregate functions that Google Standard SQL supports.

ANY_VALUE

ANY_VALUE(
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns expression for some row chosen from the group. Which row is chosen is nondeterministic, not random. Returns NULL when the input produces no rows. Returns NULL when expression is NULL for all rows in the group.

ANY_VALUE behaves as if IGNORE NULLS is specified; rows for which expression is NULL are not considered and won't be selected.

Supported Argument Types

Any

Optional Clause

HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Returned Data Types

Matches the input data type.

Examples

SELECT ANY_VALUE(fruit) as any_value
FROM UNNEST(["apple", "banana", "pear"]) as fruit;

+-----------+
| any_value |
+-----------+
| apple     |
+-----------+

ARRAY_AGG

ARRAY_AGG(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [{IGNORE|RESPECT} NULLS]
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns an ARRAY of expression values.

Supported Argument Types

All data types except ARRAY.

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
IGNORE NULLS or RESPECT NULLS: If IGNORE NULLS is specified, the NULL values are excluded from the result. If RESPECT NULLS is specified, the NULL values are included in the result. If neither is specified, the NULL values are included in the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Output Element Order

The order of the elements in the output is non-deterministic, which means you might receive a different result each time you use this function.

Returned Data Types

ARRAY

If there are zero input rows, this function returns NULL.

Examples

SELECT ARRAY_AGG(x) AS array_agg
FROM UNNEST([2, 1, -2, 3, -2, 1, 2]) AS x;

+-------------------------+
| array_agg               |
+-------------------------+
| [2, 1, -2, 3, -2, 1, 2] |
+-------------------------+

SELECT ARRAY_AGG(DISTINCT x) AS array_agg
FROM UNNEST([2, 1, -2, 3, -2, 1, 2]) AS x;

+---------------+
| array_agg     |
+---------------+
| [2, 1, -2, 3] |
+---------------+

SELECT ARRAY_AGG(x IGNORE NULLS) AS array_agg
FROM UNNEST([NULL, 1, -2, 3, -2, 1, NULL]) AS x;

+-------------------+
| array_agg         |
+-------------------+
| [1, -2, 3, -2, 1] |
+-------------------+

ARRAY_CONCAT_AGG

ARRAY_CONCAT_AGG(
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Concatenates elements from expression of type ARRAY, returning a single ARRAY as a result. This function ignores NULL input arrays, but respects the NULL elements in non-NULL input arrays.

Supported Argument Types

ARRAY

Optional Clause

HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Output Element Order

The order of the elements in the output is non-deterministic, which means you might receive a different result each time you use this function.

Returned Data Types

ARRAY

Returns NULL if there are zero input rows or expression evaluates to NULL for all rows.

Examples

SELECT ARRAY_CONCAT_AGG(x) AS array_concat_agg FROM (
  SELECT [NULL, 1, 2, 3, 4] AS x
  UNION ALL SELECT NULL
  UNION ALL SELECT [5, 6]
  UNION ALL SELECT [7, 8, 9]
);

+-----------------------------------+
| array_concat_agg                  |
+-----------------------------------+
| [NULL, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] |
+-----------------------------------+

AVG

AVG(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the average of non-NULL input values, or NaN if the input contains a NaN.

Supported Argument Types

Any numeric input type, such as INT64. Note that, for floating point input types, the return result is non-deterministic, which means you might receive a different result each time you use this function.

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Returned Data Types

INPUT	INT64	NUMERIC	FLOAT64
OUTPUT	FLOAT64	NUMERIC	FLOAT64

Examples

SELECT AVG(x) as avg
FROM UNNEST([0, 2, 4, 4, 5]) as x;

+-----+
| avg |
+-----+
| 3   |
+-----+

SELECT AVG(DISTINCT x) AS avg
FROM UNNEST([0, 2, 4, 4, 5]) AS x;

+------+
| avg  |
+------+
| 2.75 |
+------+

BIT_AND

BIT_AND(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Performs a bitwise AND operation on expression and returns the result.

Supported Argument Types

INT64

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Returned Data Types

INT64

Examples

SELECT BIT_AND(x) as bit_and FROM UNNEST([0xF001, 0x00A1]) as x;

+---------+
| bit_and |
+---------+
| 1       |
+---------+

BIT_OR

BIT_OR(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Performs a bitwise OR operation on expression and returns the result.

Supported Argument Types

INT64

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Returned Data Types

INT64

Examples

SELECT BIT_OR(x) as bit_or FROM UNNEST([0xF001, 0x00A1]) as x;

+--------+
| bit_or |
+--------+
| 61601  |
+--------+

BIT_XOR

BIT_XOR(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Performs a bitwise XOR operation on expression and returns the result.

Supported Argument Types

INT64

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Returned Data Types

INT64

Examples

SELECT BIT_XOR(x) AS bit_xor FROM UNNEST([5678, 1234]) AS x;

+---------+
| bit_xor |
+---------+
| 4860    |
+---------+

SELECT BIT_XOR(x) AS bit_xor FROM UNNEST([1234, 5678, 1234]) AS x;

+---------+
| bit_xor |
+---------+
| 5678    |
+---------+

SELECT BIT_XOR(DISTINCT x) AS bit_xor FROM UNNEST([1234, 5678, 1234]) AS x;

+---------+
| bit_xor |
+---------+
| 4860    |
+---------+

COUNT

COUNT(*)

COUNT(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the number of rows in the input.
Returns the number of rows with expression evaluated to any value other than NULL.

Supported Argument Types

expression can be any data type. If DISTINCT is present, expression can only be a data type that is groupable.

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Return Data Types

INT64

Examples

You can use the COUNT function to return the number of rows in a table or the number of distinct values of an expression. For example:

SELECT
  COUNT(*) AS count_star,
  COUNT(DISTINCT x) AS count_dist_x
FROM UNNEST([1, 4, 4, 5]) AS x;

+------------+--------------+
| count_star | count_dist_x |
+------------+--------------+
| 4          | 3            |
+------------+--------------+

SELECT COUNT(*) AS count_star, COUNT(x) AS count_x
FROM UNNEST([1, 4, NULL, 4, 5]) AS x;

+------------+---------+
| count_star | count_x |
+------------+---------+
| 5          | 4       |
+------------+---------+

If you want to count the number of distinct values of an expression for which a certain condition is satisfied, this is one recipe that you can use:

COUNT(DISTINCT IF(condition, expression, NULL))

Here, IF will return the value of expression if condition is TRUE, or NULL otherwise. The surrounding COUNT(DISTINCT ...) will ignore the NULL values, so it will count only the distinct values of expression for which condition is TRUE.

For example, to count the number of distinct positive values of x:

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT IF(x > 0, x, NULL)) AS distinct_positive
FROM UNNEST([1, -2, 4, 1, -5, 4, 1, 3, -6, 1]) AS x;

+-------------------+
| distinct_positive |
+-------------------+
| 3                 |
+-------------------+

Or to count the number of distinct dates on which a certain kind of event occurred:

WITH Events AS (
  SELECT DATE '2021-01-01' AS event_date, 'SUCCESS' AS event_type
  UNION ALL
  SELECT DATE '2021-01-02' AS event_date, 'SUCCESS' AS event_type
  UNION ALL
  SELECT DATE '2021-01-02' AS event_date, 'FAILURE' AS event_type
  UNION ALL
  SELECT DATE '2021-01-03' AS event_date, 'SUCCESS' AS event_type
  UNION ALL
  SELECT DATE '2021-01-04' AS event_date, 'FAILURE' AS event_type
  UNION ALL
  SELECT DATE '2021-01-04' AS event_date, 'FAILURE' AS event_type
)
SELECT
  COUNT(DISTINCT IF(event_type = 'FAILURE', event_date, NULL))
    AS distinct_dates_with_failures
FROM Events;

+------------------------------+
| distinct_dates_with_failures |
+------------------------------+
| 2                            |
+------------------------------+

COUNTIF

COUNTIF(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the count of TRUE values for expression. Returns 0 if there are zero input rows, or if expression evaluates to FALSE or NULL for all rows.

Since expression must be a BOOL, the form COUNTIF(DISTINCT ...) is generally not useful: there is only one distinct value of TRUE. So COUNTIF(DISTINCT ...) will return 1 if expression evaluates to TRUE for one or more input rows, or 0 otherwise. Usually when someone wants to combine COUNTIF and DISTINCT, they want to count the number of distinct values of an expression for which a certain condition is satisfied. One recipe to achieve this is the following:

COUNT(DISTINCT IF(condition, expression, NULL))

Note that this uses COUNT, not COUNTIF; the IF part has been moved inside. To learn more, see the examples for COUNT.

Supported Argument Types

BOOL

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Return Data Types

INT64

Examples

SELECT COUNTIF(x<0) AS num_negative, COUNTIF(x>0) AS num_positive
FROM UNNEST([5, -2, 3, 6, -10, -7, 4, 0]) AS x;

+--------------+--------------+
| num_negative | num_positive |
+--------------+--------------+
| 3            | 4            |
+--------------+--------------+

LOGICAL_AND

LOGICAL_AND(
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the logical AND of all non-NULL expressions. Returns NULL if there are zero input rows or expression evaluates to NULL for all rows.

Supported Argument Types

BOOL

Optional Clause

HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Return Data Types

BOOL

Examples

SELECT LOGICAL_AND(x) AS logical_and FROM UNNEST([true, false, true]) AS x;

+-------------+
| logical_and |
+-------------+
| false       |
+-------------+

LOGICAL_OR

LOGICAL_OR(
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the logical OR of all non-NULL expressions. Returns NULL if there are zero input rows or expression evaluates to NULL for all rows.

Supported Argument Types

BOOL

Optional Clause

HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Return Data Types

BOOL

Examples

SELECT LOGICAL_OR(x) AS logical_or FROM UNNEST([true, false, true]) AS x;

+------------+
| logical_or |
+------------+
| true       |
+------------+

MAX

MAX(
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the maximum value of non-NULL expressions. Returns NULL if there are zero input rows or expression evaluates to NULL for all rows. Returns NaN if the input contains a NaN.

Supported Argument Types

Any orderable data type.

Optional Clause

HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Return Data Types

Same as the data type used as the input values.

Examples

SELECT MAX(x) AS max
FROM UNNEST([8, 37, 4, 55]) AS x;

+-----+
| max |
+-----+
| 55  |
+-----+

MIN

MIN(
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the minimum value of non-NULL expressions. Returns NULL if there are zero input rows or expression evaluates to NULL for all rows. Returns NaN if the input contains a NaN.

Supported Argument Types

Any orderable data type.

Optional Clause

HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Return Data Types

Same as the data type used as the input values.

Examples

SELECT MIN(x) AS min
FROM UNNEST([8, 37, 4, 55]) AS x;

+-----+
| min |
+-----+
| 4   |
+-----+

STRING_AGG

STRING_AGG(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression [, delimiter]
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns a value (either STRING or BYTES) obtained by concatenating non-null values. Returns NULL if there are zero input rows or expression evaluates to NULL for all rows.

If a delimiter is specified, concatenated values are separated by that delimiter; otherwise, a comma is used as a delimiter.

Supported Argument Types

STRING BYTES

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Output Element Order

The order of the elements in the output is non-deterministic, which means you might receive a different result each time you use this function.

Return Data Types

STRING BYTES

Examples

SELECT STRING_AGG(fruit) AS string_agg
FROM UNNEST(["apple", NULL, "pear", "banana", "pear"]) AS fruit;

+------------------------+
| string_agg             |
+------------------------+
| apple,pear,banana,pear |
+------------------------+

SELECT STRING_AGG(fruit, " & ") AS string_agg
FROM UNNEST(["apple", "pear", "banana", "pear"]) AS fruit;

+------------------------------+
| string_agg                   |
+------------------------------+
| apple & pear & banana & pear |
+------------------------------+

SELECT STRING_AGG(DISTINCT fruit, " & ") AS string_agg
FROM UNNEST(["apple", "pear", "banana", "pear"]) AS fruit;

+-----------------------+
| string_agg            |
+-----------------------+
| apple & pear & banana |
+-----------------------+

SUM

SUM(
  [DISTINCT]
  expression
  [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2]
)

Description

Returns the sum of non-null values.

If the expression is a floating point value, the sum is non-deterministic, which means you might receive a different result each time you use this function.

Supported Argument Types

Any supported numeric data types.

Optional Clauses

The clauses are applied in the following order:

DISTINCT: Each distinct value of expression is aggregated only once into the result.
HAVING MAX or HAVING MIN: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates by a maximum or minimum value. See HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause for details.

Return Data Types

INPUT	INT64	NUMERIC	FLOAT64
OUTPUT	INT64	NUMERIC	FLOAT64

Special cases:

Returns NULL if the input contains only NULLs.

Returns NULL if the input contains no rows.

Returns Inf if the input contains Inf.

Returns -Inf if the input contains -Inf.

Returns NaN if the input contains a NaN.

Returns NaN if the input contains a combination of Inf and -Inf.

Examples

SELECT SUM(x) AS sum
FROM UNNEST([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]) AS x;

+-----+
| sum |
+-----+
| 25  |
+-----+

SELECT SUM(DISTINCT x) AS sum
FROM UNNEST([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]) AS x;

+-----+
| sum |
+-----+
| 15  |
+-----+

SELECT SUM(x) AS sum
FROM UNNEST([]) AS x;

+------+
| sum  |
+------+
| NULL |
+------+

Common clauses

HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN clause

Most aggregate functions support two optional clauses called HAVING MAX and HAVING MIN, which restricts the set of rows that a function aggregates to rows that have a maximal or minimal value in a particular column. The syntax generally looks like this:

aggregate_function(expression1 [HAVING {MAX | MIN} expression2])

HAVING MAX: Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates to those having a value for expression2 equal to the maximum value for expression2 within the group. The maximum value is equal to the result of MAX(expression2).
HAVING MIN Restricts the set of rows that the function aggregates to those having a value for expression2 equal to the minimum value for expression2 within the group. The minimum value is equal to the result of MIN(expression2).

These clauses ignore NULL values when computing the maximum or minimum value unless expression2 evaluates to NULL for all rows.

These clauses only support orderable data types.

Example

In this example, the average rainfall is returned for the most recent year, 2001.

WITH Precipitation AS
 (SELECT 2001 as year, 'spring' as season, 9 as inches UNION ALL
  SELECT 2001, 'winter', 1 UNION ALL
  SELECT 2000, 'fall', 3 UNION ALL
  SELECT 2000, 'summer', 5 UNION ALL
  SELECT 2000, 'spring', 7 UNION ALL
  SELECT 2000, 'winter', 2)
SELECT AVG(inches HAVING MAX year) as average FROM Precipitation

+---------+
| average |
+---------+
| 5       |
+---------+

First, the query gets the rows with the maximum value in the year column. There are two:

+------+--------+--------+
| year | season | inches |
+------+--------+--------+
| 2001 | spring | 9      |
| 2001 | winter | 1      |
+------+--------+--------+

Finally, the query averages the values in the inches column (9 and 1) with this result:

+---------+
| average |
+---------+
| 5       |
+---------+