The SQL OVER() clause - when and why is it useful?

Question

    USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
SELECT SalesOrderID, ProductID, OrderQty
    ,SUM(OrderQty) OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID) AS \'Total\'
    ,AVG(OrderQty) OVER(PAR         


        

Answer 1

The OVER clause is powerful in that you can have aggregates over different ranges ("windowing"), whether you use a GROUP BY or not

Example: get count per SalesOrderID and count of all

SELECT
    SalesOrderID, ProductID, OrderQty
    ,COUNT(OrderQty) AS 'Count'
    ,COUNT(*) OVER () AS 'CountAll'
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail 
WHERE
     SalesOrderID IN(43659,43664)
GROUP BY
     SalesOrderID, ProductID, OrderQty

Get different COUNTs, no GROUP BY

SELECT
    SalesOrderID, ProductID, OrderQty
    ,COUNT(OrderQty) OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID) AS 'CountQtyPerOrder'
    ,COUNT(OrderQty) OVER(PARTITION BY ProductID) AS 'CountQtyPerProduct',
    ,COUNT(*) OVER () AS 'CountAllAgain'
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail 
WHERE
     SalesOrderID IN(43659,43664)

Answer 2

prkey   whatsthat               cash   
890    "abb                "   32  32
43     "abbz               "   2   34
4      "bttu               "   1   35
45     "gasstuff           "   2   37
545    "gasz               "   5   42
80009  "hoo                "   9   51
2321   "ibm                "   1   52
998    "krk                "   2   54
42     "kx-5010            "   2   56
32     "lto                "   4   60
543    "mp                 "   5   65
465    "multipower         "   2   67
455    "O.N.               "   1   68
7887   "prem               "   7   75
434    "puma               "   3   78
23     "retractble         "   3   81
242    "Trujillo's stuff   "   4   85

That's a result of query. Table used as source is the same exept that it has no last column. This column is a moving sum of third one.

Query:

SELECT prkey,whatsthat,cash,SUM(cash) over (order by whatsthat)
    FROM public.iuk order by whatsthat,prkey
    ;

(table goes as public.iuk)

sql version:  2012

It's a little over dbase(1986) level, I don't know why 25+ years has been needed to finish it up.