Re: Get COUNT results from two different columns - Mailing list pgsql-general

While you finally did provide this info, it is important to be upfront about exactly what error you are receiving.

Honestly, it feels odd leveraging UNION to solve this problem, but upon further reflection it does provide a nice solution.

/* an (incomplete) subquery to be substituted into the main query below /*

SELECT id, count(*) AS positive_counts --positive values

UNION ALL

SELECT id, (- count(*)) AS negative_counts --negative of the count

You now have a table where IDs (can) repeat, but at most appear only twice, once with a positive count and once with a negative count.  All you need to do to get your final answer is sum the positive and negative count together for each ID.

SELECT union_subquery.id, sum(union_subquery.counted)

FROM (/*this is a subquery, in the FROM clause */) AS union_subquery (id, counted)

 -- which requires an alias (name), which your query omitted and why you got the error you described.

-- I added column aliases here to emphasize that there are only two output columns

-- the name of the second column is originally taken from the first unioned query

-- (so, positive_counts, the name negative_counts is discarded once the union is complete.

-- But since writing sum(positive_counts) in the main query would be confusing I renamed

-- the column to just "counted" using the alias clause

GROUP BY union_subquery.id

David J.