How do I calculate a running SUM?

Question

How do I get a column that is the sum of the preceding values of another column?

Answer 1

You can do it by joining the table with itself (performing a so-called Cartesian or cross join). See the following example.

SELECT a.name, a.gdppc, SUM(b.gdppc)
FROM gdppc AS a, gdppc AS b WHERE b.gdppc <= a.gdppc 
GROUP BY b.id ORDER BY a.gdppc;

Given a table containing countries and their per capita GDP it will give you a running total of the GDP figure.

Democratic Republic of Congo|329.645|329.645
Zimbabwe|370.465|700.11
Liberia|385.417|1085.527
Burundi|399.657|1485.184
Eritrea|678.954|2164.138
Niger|711.877|2876.015
Central African Republic|743.945|3619.96
Sierra Leone|781.594|4401.554
Togo|833.803|5235.357
Malawi|867.063|6102.42
Mozambique|932.511|7034.931
...

Note that this can be a very resource-intensive operation, because if a table has N elements it will create a temporary table with N*N elements. I would not perform it on a large table.