Re: Summing & Grouping in a Hierarchical Structure

Hi Mike,

No Excel here. This is a strictly libre systems environment. I believe
LibreOffice Calc has a similar tool though. And your suggestion might be a
great one.

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Relyea, Mike <Mike(dot)Relyea(at)xerox(dot)com>wrote:

> > From: pgsql-sql-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org [mailto:
> pgsql-sql-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Don Parris
> > Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 8:58 PM
> > To: pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org
> > Subject: [SQL] Summing & Grouping in a Hierarchical Structure
> >
> > Hi all,
> > I posted to this list some time ago about working with a hierarchical
> category structure. I had great difficulty with my problem and gave up
> for a time.
> > I recently returned to it and resolved a big part of it. I have one
> step left to go, but at least I have solved this part.
> >
> > Here is the original thread (or one of them):
> >
> http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAJ-7yonw4_qDCp-ZNYwEkR2jdLKeL8nfGc+-TLLSW=Rmo1VkbA@mail.gmail.com
> >
> >
> > Here is my recent blog post about how I managed to show my expenses
> summed and grouped by a mid-level category:
> > http://dcparris.net/2013/02/13/hierarchical-categories-rdbms/
> >
> >
> > Specifically, I wanted to sum and group expenses according to
> categories, not just at the bottom tier, but at higher tiers, so as to show
> more summarized information.
> > A CEO primarily wants to know the sum total for all the business units,
> yet have the ability to drill down to more detailed levels if something is
> unusually high or low.
> > In my case, I could see the details, but not the summary. Well now I
> can summarize by what I refer to as the 2nd-level categories.
> > Anyway, I hope this helps someone, as I have come to appreciate - and I
> mean really appreciate - the challenge of working with hierarchical
> structures in a 2-dimensional RDBMS.
> > If anyone sees something I should explain better or in more depth,
> please let me know.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Don
> > --
> > D.C. Parris, FMP, Linux+, ESL Certificate
> > Minister, Security/FM Coordinator, Free Software Advocate
> > http://dcparris.net/
> > GPG Key ID: F5E179BE
>
> My two cents would be to actually use a different tool for the job of
> presenting this data. I'd have used a pivot table in Microsoft Excel. Not
> sure what your environment or requirements are but pivot tables are widely
> used in business, easy to share, can be formatted, and give the user the
> ability to drill down and navigate to the data they want to see.
> I'd set up a query to pull the raw data you need with all of the
> categories and associated data you need. Then bring that data to Excel to
> present and summarize it.
>
> Mike
>

--
D.C. Parris, FMP, Linux+, ESL Certificate
Minister, Security/FM Coordinator, Free Software Advocate
http://dcparris.net/
<https://www.xing.com/profile/Don_Parris><http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcparris>
GPG Key ID: F5E179BE