1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.

ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

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What’s the difference? — RANK()

vs.DENSE_RANK()
vs.ROW_NUMBER()
SQL 101 —How to Rank Rows in Byzer

Lori Lu · Follow
4 min read · Mar 30, 2022

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

Photo by Joshua Golde on Unsplash

W hat’s the difference between RANK() vs. DENSE_RANK() vs.

ROW_NUMBER()? How are they different from each other?

Struggle to answer this question? Well, you have to read this blog!

Let’s go back to the real world and learn the difference from a common retail
analytics use case. We’ll run some queries in Byzer Notebook so you can
easily compare them to each other.

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

Retail Analytics: Finding Top X Best-Selling Products of This

Season
Data is the backbone of the retail industry. What products should be sold in
which store at what price is determined by data insights extracted from
analyzing customer purchase history. One of the must-have metrics is Top X
best-selling products within a timeframe.

In this blog, let’s run some SQL queries in Byzer Notebook to find the Top 3
Best-Selling Products of this season for a retailer.

We’ll use the sales table. It has the following columns:

product - The name of the product.

product_price - The price of the product.

items_sold - The number of items sold.

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

Dummy Sales Data

Let’s create a dummy table in Byzer running the following code:

-- store dummy sales data as a JSON string

set sales='''

product,product_price,items_sold

a, 44.12, 6547
b, 100, 547
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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

c, 12.47, 48

d, 12, 3254

e, 100, 547
f, 12, 3254

g, 12, 3254

h, 7.77, 147

''';
-- convert JSON string to a table

load csvStr.`sales` options header="true" and inferSchema="true"

as sales;

Pick Which One? RANK() or DENSE_RANK() or ROW_NUMBER()

To compute the most popular items, intuitively, we would sum the revenue
up for each product, sort products in descending order of total revenue, and
then pick the top 3 products. Alternatively, we can use the SQL window
function — RANK() to compute the ranking and then filter data to show the
top 3 items.

However, the results might surprise you as you run the query with RANK() :

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

Where is the No.3 item?

Let’s run the following query that ranks the rows by revenue using the three
ranking functions described above:

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

SQL — RANK(), DENSE_RANK(), ROW_NUMBER()

See the difference?

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

The ROW_NUMBER() function is self-explanatory, as you’ve already seen the

data. It simply assigns a consecutive ranking to each row ordered by
revenue. If two rows have the same value, they won’t have the same ranking.

SQL — ROW_NUMBER() function

The RANK() function creates a ranking of the rows based on the provided
columns. It starts with assigning “1” to the first row in the order and then
gives higher numbers to rows lower in the order. If rows have the same
value, they’re ranked the same. However, the next spot is shifted accordingly.

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

For example, if two rows are 2th (have the same rank), the next row will be
4th (i.e., 3rd doesn’t exist).

SQL — RANK() function

The DENSE_RANK() function is rather similar. The only difference is that it

doesn’t leave gaps in the ranking values. Even though more than one row can

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

have the same rank, the rank of the next row will be one plus the previous
number. For example, if two rows are 2rd, the next row will be 3rd.

SQL — DENSE_RANK() function

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

So DENSE_RANK() is the right ranking function to show top results in this use
case.

Here is the code:

SELECT
RANK() OVER(ORDER BY product_price * items_sold DESC) AS rank,
DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY product_price * items_sold DESC) AS
dense_rank,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY product_price * items_sold DESC) AS
row_number,
product,
product_price * items_sold AS revenue
FROM sales
AS sales_rank;

What’s Byzer?

A simple analogy of Byzer

Go to this blog — Byzer 101, if you want to install Byzer on your laptop.

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1/4/24, 5:57 AM What’s the difference? — RANK() vs.DENSE_RANK() vs.ROW_NUMBER() | by Lori Lu | Medium

Want to see how Byzer how seamlessly Byzer Notebook integrates with SQL
and Python? Go try this tutorial:

The EASIEST Way to Build and Visualise a Conversion Funnel

You can Do More with Less in Byzer !

Leaving feedback:

Please leave a comment here or join Slack to ask

questions, get help, or discuss all things Byzer!

Last but not least, please share Byzer with data

enthusiasts around you if you like this open-source
project!

Thanks for reading!

Please share, subscribe to my email list, or follow me on Medium for upcoming

blogs.

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Data Sql Analytics Engineering Ml So Good

Written by Lori Lu Follow

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Data, Strategy & Planning | Restaurant Industry

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