SQL query to compare product sales by month

Question

I have a Monthly Status database view I need to build a report based on. The data in the view looks something like this:

Category | Revenue  |  Yearh  |  Month
B         


        

Answer 1

About the markdown - Yeah that is frustrating. The editor did preview my HTML table, but after posting it was gone - So had to remove all HTML formatting from the post...

@kcrumley I think we've reached similar conclusions. This query easily gets real ugly. I actually solved this before reading your answer, using a similar (but yet different approach). I have access to create stored procedures and functions on the reporting database. I created a Table Valued function accepting a product category and a financial year as the parameter. Based on that the function will populate a table containing 12 rows. The rows will be populated with data from the view if any sales available, if not the row will have 0 values.

I then join the two tables returned by the functions. Since I know all tables will have twelve roves it's allot easier, and I can join on Product Category and Month:

SELECT 
    SP1.Program,
    SP1.Year,
    SP1.Month,
    SP1.TotalRevenue AS ThisYearRevenue,
    SP2.TotalRevenue AS LastYearRevenue
FROM GetFinancialYear(@Category, 'First Look',  2008) AS SP1 
     RIGHT JOIN GetFinancialYear(@Category, 'First Look',  2007) AS SP2 ON 
         SP1.Program = SP2.Program AND 
         SP1.Month = SP2.Month

I think your approach is probably a little cleaner as the GetFinancialYear function is quite messy! But at least it works - which makes me happy for now ;)