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3. Explore Yugabyte SQL

After creating a local cluster, you can start exploring YugabyteDB's PostgreSQL-compatible, fully-relational Yugabyte SQL API.

ysqlsh is the command line shell for interacting with the YSQL API. You will use ysqlsh for this tutorial.

1. Load sample data

Your YugabyteDB installation includes sample datasets you can use to test out YugabyteDB. These are located in the share directory. The datasets are provided in the form of SQL script files. (The datasets are also available in the sample directory of the YugabyteDB GitHub repository). This exercise uses the Retail Analytics dataset.

The following files are used:

To open the YSQL shell, run ysqlsh.

$ ./bin/ysqlsh

ysqlsh (11.2-YB-2.1.0.0-b0)
Type "help" for help.

yugabyte=#

To open the YSQL shell, run ysqlsh.

$ ./bin/ysqlsh

ysqlsh (11.2-YB-2.1.0.0-b0)
Type "help" for help.

yugabyte=#

To open the YSQL shell, run ysqlsh.

$ docker exec -it yugabyte /home/yugabyte/bin/ysqlsh --echo-queries

ysqlsh (11.2-YB-2.1.0.0-b0)
Type "help" for help.

yugabyte=#

To open the YSQL shell (ysqlsh), run the following.

$ kubectl --namespace yb-demo exec -it yb-tserver-0 -- sh -c "cd /home/yugabyte && ysqlsh -h yb-tserver-0 --echo-queries"

ysqlsh (11.2-YB-2.1.0.0-b0)
Type "help" for help.

yugabyte=#

  1. Create a database (yb_demo) by using the following CREATE DATABASE command.

    yugabyte=# CREATE DATABASE yb_demo;

  2. Connect to the new database using the following YSQL shell \c meta command.

    yugabyte=# \c yb_demo;

  3. Create the database schema, which includes four tables, by running the following \i meta command.

    yb_demo=# \i share/schema.sql;

  4. Load the data into the tables by running the following four \i commands.

    \i share/products.sql;
\i share/users.sql;
\i share/orders.sql;
\i share/reviews.sql;

    You now have sample data and are ready to begin exploring YSQL in YugabyteDB.

2. Run a simple query

To look at the schema of the products table, enter the following command:

yb_demo=# \d products

You should see an output like the following:

                                        Table "public.products"
   Column   |            Type             | Collation | Nullable |               Default                
------------+-----------------------------+-----------+----------+--------------------------------------
 id         | bigint                      |           | not null | nextval('products_id_seq'::regclass)
 created_at | timestamp without time zone |           |          | 
 category   | text                        |           |          | 
 ean        | text                        |           |          | 
 price      | double precision            |           |          | 
 quantity   | integer                     |           |          | 5000
 rating     | double precision            |           |          | 
 title      | text                        |           |          | 
 vendor     | text                        |           |          | 
Indexes:
    "products_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, lsm (id HASH)

To see how many products there are in this table, you can run the following query.

yb_demo=# SELECT count(*) FROM products;

You should see an output which looks like the following:

 count
-------
   200
(1 row)

Next, run a query to select the id, title, category and price columns for the first five products.

yb_demo=# SELECT id, title, category, price, rating
          FROM products
          LIMIT 5;

You should see output like the following:

 id  |           title            | category |      price       | rating 
-----+----------------------------+----------+------------------+--------
  22 | Enormous Marble Shoes      | Gizmo    | 21.4245199604423 |    4.2
  38 | Lightweight Leather Gloves | Gadget   | 44.0462485589292 |    3.8
 162 | Gorgeous Copper Knife      | Gadget   | 22.3785988001101 |    3.3
 174 | Rustic Iron Keyboard       | Gadget   | 74.4095392945406 |    4.4
  46 | Rustic Linen Keyboard      | Gadget   | 78.6996782532274 |      4
(5 rows)

To view the next 3 products, add an OFFSET 5 clause to start from the fifth product.

yb_demo=# SELECT id, title, category, price, rating
          FROM products
          LIMIT 3 OFFSET 5;

You should see an output which looks like the following:

 id  |           title           | category  |      price       | rating 
-----+---------------------------+-----------+------------------+--------
 152 | Enormous Aluminum Clock   | Widget    | 32.5971248660044 |    3.6
   3 | Synergistic Granite Chair | Doohickey | 35.3887448815391 |      4
 197 | Aerodynamic Concrete Lamp | Gizmo     | 46.7640712447334 |    4.6
(3 rows)

3. JOINs

A JOIN clause is used to combine rows from two or more tables, based on a related column between them. Let us do this by combining some orders with the information of the corresponding users that placed the order.

From the orders table, you are going to select the total column that represents the total amount the user paid. For each of these orders, you are going to fetch the id, the name and the email from the users table of the corresponding users that placed those orders. The related column between the two tables is the user's id. This can be expressed as the following join query:

yb_demo=# SELECT users.id, users.name, users.email, orders.id, orders.total
          FROM orders INNER JOIN users ON orders.user_id=users.id
          LIMIT 10;

You should see something like the following:

  id  |        name         |             email             |  id   |      total
------+---------------------+-------------------------------+-------+------------------
  616 | Rex Thiel           | rex-thiel@gmail.com           |  4443 | 101.414602060277
 2289 | Alanis Kovacek      | alanis.kovacek@yahoo.com      | 17195 | 71.8499366564206
   37 | Jaleel Collins      | jaleel.collins@gmail.com      |   212 | 38.8821451022809
 2164 | Cordia Farrell      | cordia.farrell@gmail.com      | 16223 | 37.7489430287531
 1528 | Donny Murazik       | murazik-donny@hotmail.com     | 11546 | 52.3082273751586
 1389 | Henriette O'Connell | connell-o-henriette@yahoo.com | 10551 | 69.3117644687696
 2408 | Blake Jast          | jast.blake@hotmail.com        | 18149 | 150.788925887077
 1201 | Kaycee Keebler      | kaycee-keebler@gmail.com      |  8937 | 48.3440955866708
 1421 | Cornell Cartwright  | cornell-cartwright@gmail.com  | 10772 | 191.867670306882
  523 | Deonte Hoeger       | hoeger.deonte@hotmail.com     |  3710 | 71.4010754169826
(10 rows)

4. Distributed transactions

To track the quantities accurately, each product being ordered in some quantity by a user has to decrement the corresponding product inventory quantity. These operations should be performed inside a transaction.

Imagine the user with id 1 wants to order for 10 units of the product with id 2.

Before running the transaction, you can verify that you have 5000 units of product 2 in stock by running the following query:

yb_demo=# SELECT id, category, price, quantity FROM products WHERE id=2;

SELECT id, category, price, quantity FROM products WHERE id=2;
 id | category  |      price       | quantity
----+-----------+------------------+----------
  2 | Doohickey | 70.0798961307176 |     5000
(1 row)

To place the order, run the following transaction:

yb_demo=# BEGIN TRANSACTION;

/* First insert a new order into the orders table. */
INSERT INTO orders
  (id, created_at, user_id, product_id, discount, quantity, subtotal, tax, total)
VALUES (
  (SELECT max(id)+1 FROM orders)                 /* id */,
  now()                                          /* created_at */,
  1                                              /* user_id */,
  2                                              /* product_id */, 
  0                                              /* discount */,
  10                                             /* quantity */,
  (10 * (SELECT price FROM products WHERE id=2)) /* subtotal */,
  0                                              /* tax */,
  (10 * (SELECT price FROM products WHERE id=2)) /* total */
) RETURNING id;

/* Next decrement the total quantity from the products table. */
UPDATE products SET quantity = quantity - 10 WHERE id = 2;

COMMIT;

To verify that the order got inserted, run the following:

yb_demo=# select * from orders where id = (select max(id) from orders);

  id   |         created_at         | user_id | product_id | discount | quantity |     subtotal     | tax |      total       
-------+----------------------------+---------+------------+----------+----------+------------------+-----+------------------
 18761 | 2020-01-30 09:24:29.784078 |       1 |          2 |        0 |       10 | 700.798961307176 |   0 | 700.798961307176
(1 row)

We can also verify that total quantity of product id 2 in the inventory is 4990 by running the following query.

yb_demo=# SELECT id, category, price, quantity FROM products WHERE id=2;

 id | category  |      price       | quantity
----+-----------+------------------+----------
  2 | Doohickey | 70.0798961307176 |     4990
(1 row)

5. Built-in functions

YSQL supports a rich set of built-in functions. In this example, you will look at some functions such as DISTINCT, MIN, MAX and AVG in the context of the data set.

  • How are users signing up for my site?

To answer this question, you should list the unique set of source channels present in the database. This can be achieved as follows:

yb_demo=# SELECT DISTINCT(source) FROM users;

source
-----------
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Organic
 Affiliate
 Google
(5 rows)
  • What is the min, max and average price of products in the store?
yb_demo=# SELECT MIN(price), MAX(price), AVG(price) FROM products;

min               |       max        |       avg
------------------+------------------+------------------
 15.6919436739704 | 98.8193368436819 | 55.7463996679207
(1 row)

6. Aggregations

The GROUP BY clause is commonly used to perform aggregations. Below are a couple of examples of using these to answer some types of questions about the data.

  • What is the most effective channel for user signups?
yb_demo=# SELECT source, count(*) AS num_user_signups
          FROM users
          GROUP BY source
          ORDER BY num_user_signups DESC;

source     | num_user_signups
-----------+------------------
 Facebook  |              512
 Affiliate |              506
 Google    |              503
 Twitter   |              495
 Organic   |              484
(5 rows)
  • What are the most effective channels for product sales by revenue?
yb_demo=# SELECT source, ROUND(SUM(orders.total)) AS total_sales
          FROM users LEFT JOIN orders ON users.id=orders.user_id
          GROUP BY source
          ORDER BY total_sales DESC;

  source   | total_sales
-----------+-------------
 Facebook  |      333454
 Google    |      325184
 Twitter   |      320150
 Organic   |      319637
 Affiliate |      297605
(5 rows)

7. Views

Let us answer the questions below by creating a view.

  • What percentage of the total sales is from the Facebook channel?
yb_demo=# CREATE VIEW channel AS
            (SELECT source, ROUND(SUM(orders.total)) AS total_sales
             FROM users LEFT JOIN orders ON users.id=orders.user_id
             GROUP BY source
             ORDER BY total_sales DESC);

Now that the view is created, you can see it in our list of relations.

yb_demo=# \d

               List of relations
 Schema |      Name       |   Type   |  Owner
--------+-----------------+----------+----------
 public | channel         | view     | yugabyte
 public | orders          | table    | yugabyte
 public | orders_id_seq   | sequence | yugabyte
 public | products        | table    | yugabyte
 public | products_id_seq | sequence | yugabyte
 public | reviews         | table    | yugabyte
 public | reviews_id_seq  | sequence | yugabyte
 public | users           | table    | yugabyte
 public | users_id_seq    | sequence | yugabyte
(9 rows)

yb_demo=# SELECT source, 
            total_sales * 100.0 / (SELECT SUM(total_sales) FROM channel) AS percent_sales
          FROM channel
          WHERE source='Facebook';

  source  |  percent_sales
----------+------------------
 Facebook | 20.8927150492159
(1 row)

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