SQL GROUP BY CASE statement with aggregate function

Solution 1:

My guess is that you don't really want to GROUP BY some_product.

The answer to: "Is there a way to GROUP BY a column alias such as some_product in this case, or do I need to put this in a subquery and group on that?" is: You can not GROUP BY a column alias.

The SELECT clause, where column aliases are assigned, is not processed until after the GROUP BY clause. An inline view or common table expression (CTE) could be used to make the results available for grouping.

Inline view:

select ...
from (select ... , CASE WHEN col1 > col2 THEN SUM(col3*col4) ELSE 0 END AS some_product
   from ...
   group by col1, col2 ... ) T
group by some_product ...

CTE:

with T as (select ... , CASE WHEN col1 > col2 THEN SUM(col3*col4) ELSE 0 END AS some_product
   from ...
   group by col1, col2 ... )
select ...
from T
group by some_product ... 

Solution 2:

While Shannon's answer is technically correct, it looks like overkill.

The simple solution is that you need to put your summation outside of the case statement. This should do the trick:

sum(CASE WHEN col1 > col2 THEN col3*col4 ELSE 0 END) AS some_product

Basically, your old code tells SQL to execute the sum(X*Y) for each line individually (leaving each line with its own answer that can't be grouped).

The code line I have written takes the sum product, which is what you want.