Generate an integer sequence in MySQL

Question

I need to do a join with a table/result-set/whatever that has the integers n to m inclusive. Is there a trivial way to get that without just buildi

Answer 1

There is a way to get a range of values in a single query, but its a bit slow. It can be sped up by using cache tables.

assume you want a select with a range of all BOOLEAN values:

SELECT 0 as b UNION SELECT 1 as b;

we can make a view

CREATE VIEW ViewBoolean AS SELECT 0 as b UNION SELECT 1 as b;

then you can do a Byte by

CREATE VIEW ViewByteValues AS
SELECT b0.b + b1.b*2 + b2.b*4 + b3.b*8 + b4.b*16 + b5.b*32 + b6.b*64 + b7.b*128 as v FROM
ViewBoolean b0,ViewBoolean b1,ViewBoolean b2,ViewBoolean b3,ViewBoolean b4,ViewBoolean b5,ViewBoolean b6,ViewBoolean b7;

then you can do a

CREATE VIEW ViewInt16 AS
SELECT b0.v + b1.v*256 as v FROM
ViewByteValues b0,ViewByteValues b1;

then you can do a

SELECT v+MIN as x FROM ViewInt16 WHERE v

To speed this up I skipped the auto-calculation of byte values and made myself a

CREATE VIEW ViewByteValues AS
SELECT 0 as v UNION SELECT 1 as v UNION SELECT ...
...
...254 as v UNION SELECT 255 as v;

If you need a range of dates you can do.

SELECT DATE_ADD('start_date',v) as day FROM ViewInt16 WHERE v

or

SELECT DATE_ADD('start_date',v) as day FROM ViewInt16 WHERE day<'end_date';

you might be able to speed this up with the slightly faster MAKEDATE function

SELECT MAKEDATE(start_year,1+v) as day FRON ViewInt16 WHERE day>'start_date' AND day<'end_date';

Please note that this tricks are VERY SLOW and only allow the creation of FINITE sequences in a pre-defined domain (for example int16 = 0...65536 )

I am sure you can modify the queries a bit to speed things up by hinting to MySQL where to stop calculating ;) (using ON clauses instead of WHERE clauses and stuff like that)

For example:

SELECT MIN + (b0.v + b1.v*256 + b2.v*65536 + b3.v*16777216) FROM
ViewByteValues b0,
ViewByteValues b1,
ViewByteValues b2,
ViewByteValues b3
WHERE (b0.v + b1.v*256 + b2.v*65536 + b3.v*16777216) < MAX-MIN;

will keep your SQL server busy for a few hours

However

SELECT MIN + (b0.v + b1.v*256 + b2.v*65536 + b3.v*16777216) FROM
ViewByteValues b0
INNER JOIN ViewByteValues b1 ON (b1.v*256<(MAX-MIN))
INNER JOIN ViewByteValues b2 ON (b2.v*65536<(MAX-MIN))
INNER JOIN ViewByteValues b3 ON (b3.v*16777216<(MAX-MIN)
WHERE (b0.v + b1.v*256 + b2.v*65536 + b3.v*16777216) < (MAX-MIN);

will run reasonably fast - even if MAX-MIN is huge as long as you limit the result with LIMIT 1,30 or something. a COUNT(*) however will take ages and if you make the mistake of adding ORDER BY when MAX-MIN is bigger than say 100k it will again take several seconds to calculate...