postgresql - Conditional SQL count

Question

What is the best way to create columns which count the number of occurrences of data in a table? The table needs to be grouped by one column?
My database is PostgreSQL.

I have seen:

SELECT
    sum(CASE WHEN question1 = 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS ZERO,
    sum(CASE WHEN question1 = 1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS ONE,
    sum(CASE WHEN question1 = 2 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS TWO,
    category
FROM reviews
    GROUP BY category

where question1 can have a value of either 0, 1 or 2.

I have also seen a version of that using count(CASE WHEN question1 = 0 THEN 1)

However, this becomes more cumbersome to write as the number of possible values for question1 increases. Is there a convenient way to write this query, possibly optimizing performance?

Answer 1

Use the aggregate FILTER option in Postgres 9.4 or later:

SELECT category
     , count(*) FILTER (WHERE question1 = 0) AS zero
     , count(*) FILTER (WHERE question1 = 1) AS one
     , count(*) FILTER (WHERE question1 = 2) AS two
FROM   reviews
GROUP  BY 1;

Details for the FILTER clause:

• Aggregate columns with additional (distinct) filters

If you want it short:

SELECT category
     , count(question1 = 0 OR NULL) AS zero
     , count(question1 = 1 OR NULL) AS one
     , count(question1 = 2 OR NULL) AS two
FROM   reviews
GROUP  BY 1;

Overview over possible variants:

• For absolute performance, is SUM faster or COUNT?

Proper crosstab query

crosstab() yields the best performance and is shorter for longer lists of options:

SELECT * FROM crosstab(
     'SELECT category, question1, count(*) AS ct
      FROM   reviews
      GROUP  BY 1, 2
      ORDER  BY 1, 2'
   , 'VALUES (0), (1), (2)'
   ) AS ct (category text, zero int, one int, two int);

Detailed explanation:

• PostgreSQL Crosstab Query