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How to sum values from a database column in AnyLogic?

as a newbie I want to sum the values of a column pv from a database table evm in my model and store it in a variable. I have tried the SQL code SELECT SUM(pv) FROM evm; but that doesn't seem to work.I would be grateful if you lend me an aid regarding how to pull this one.

You can always write a native query and get the response in the resultset to populate the field of your pojo. Once you have the POJO/DTO created as the list of result set perform your sum on the field by Iterating the list.

You do just use the SQL you have suggested. (The database in an AnyLogic model is a standard HSQLDB database which supports this SQL syntax.)
The simplest way to execute it is to use AnyLogic's in-built functions for such queries (as would be produced by the Insert Database Query wizard), so
mySumVariable = selectFirstValue("SELECT SUM(pv) FROM evm;");
You didn't say what errors you had; obviously the table and column has to exist (and the column you're summing needs to be numeric, though NULLs are OK), as does the variable you're assigning the sum to.
If you wanted to do this in a way which more easily fits one of the standard query 'forms' suggested by the wizard (i.e., not having to know particular SQL syntax) you could just adapt the "Iterate over returned rows and do something" code to 'explicitly' sum the columns; e.g., (using the Query DSL format this time):
List<Tuple> rows = selectFrom(evm).list();
for (Tuple row : rows) {
mySumVariable += row.get(evm.pv);
}

CLOB and CriteriaQuery

I have an entity that has a CLOB attribute:
public class EntityS {
...
#Lob
private String description;
}
To retrieve certain EntityS from the DB we use a CriteriaQuery where we need the results to be unique, so we do:
query.where(builder.and(predicates.toArray(new Predicate[predicates.size()]))).distinct(true).orderBy(builder.asc(root.<Long> get(EntityS_.id)));
If we do that we get the following error:
ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected - got CLOB
I know that's because you cannot use distinct when selecting a CLOB. But we need the CLOB. Is there a workaround for this using CriteriaQuery with Predicates and so on?
We are using an ugly workaround getting rid of the .unique(true) and then filtering the results, but that's crap. We are using it only to be able to keep on developing the app, but we need a better solution and I don't seem to find one...

In case you are using Hibernate as persistence provider, you can specify the following query hint:
query.setHint(QueryHints.HINT_PASS_DISTINCT_THROUGH, false);
This way, "distinct" is not passed through to the SQL command, but Hibernate will take care of returning only distinct values.
See here for more information: https://thoughts-on-java.org/hibernate-tips-apply-distinct-to-jpql-but-not-sql-query/

Thinking outside the box - I have no idea if this will work, but perhaps it is worth a shot. (I tested it and it seems to work, but I created a table with just one column, CLOB data type, and two rows, both with the value to_clob('abcd') - of course it should work on that setup.)
To de-duplicate, compute a hash of each clob, and instruct Oracle to compute a row number partitioned by the hash value and ordered by nothing (null). Then select just the rows where the row number is 1. Something like below (t is the table I created, with one CLOB column called c).
I expect that execution time should be reasonably good. The biggest concern, of course, is collisions. How important is it that you not miss ANY of the CLOBs, and how many rows do you have in the base table in the first place? Is something like "one chance in a billion" of having a collision acceptable?
select c
from (
select c, row_number() over (partition by dbms_crypto.hash(c, 3) order by null) as rn
from t
)
where rn = 1;
Note - the user (your application, in your case) must have EXECUTE privilege on SYS.DBMS_CRYPTO. A DBA can grant it if needed.

Better to query once, then organize objects based on returned column value, or query twice with different conditions?

I have a table which I need to query, then organize the returned objects into two different lists based on a column value. I can either query the table once, retrieving the column by which I would differentiate the objects and arrange them by looping through the result set, or I can query twice with two different conditions and avoid the sorting process. Which method is generally better practice?
MY_TABLE
NAME AGE TYPE
John 25 A
Sarah 30 B
Rick 22 A
Susan 43 B
Either SELECT * FROM MY_TABLE, then sort in code based on returned types, or
SELECT NAME, AGE FROM MY_TABLE WHERE TYPE = 'A' followed by
SELECT NAME, AGE FROM MY_TABLE WHERE TYPE = 'B'

Logically, a DB query from a Java code will be more expensive than a loop within the code because querying the DB involves several steps such as connecting to DB, creating the SQL query, firing the query and getting the results back.
Besides, something can go wrong between firing the first and second query.
With an optimized single query and looping with the code, you can save a lot of time than firing two queries.
In your case, you can sort in the query itself if it helps:
SELECT * FROM MY_TABLE ORDER BY TYPE
In future if there are more types added to your table, you need not fire an additional query to retrieve it.

It is heavily dependant on the context. If each list is really huge, I would let the database to the hard part of the job with 2 queries. At the opposite, in a web application using a farm of application servers and a central database I would use one single query.
For the general use case, IMHO, I will save database resource because it is a current point of congestion and use only only query.
The only objective argument I can find is that the splitting of the list occurs in memory with a hyper simple algorithm and in a single JVM, where each query requires a bit of initialization and may involve disk access or loading of index pages.

In general, one query performs better.
Also, with issuing two queries you can potentially get inconsistent results (which may be fixed with higher transaction isolation level though ).
In any case I believe you still need to iterate through resultset (either directly or by using framework's methods that return collections).

From the database point of view, you optimally have exactly one statement that fetches exactly everything you need and nothing else. Therefore, your first option is better. But don't generalize that answer in way that makes you query more data than needed. It's a common mistake for beginners to select all rows from a table (no where clause) and do the filtering in code instead of letting the database do its job.

It also depends on your dataset volume, for instance if you have a large data set, doing a select * without any condition might take some time, but if you have an index on your 'TYPE' column, then adding a where clause will reduce the time taken to execute the query. If you are dealing with a small data set, then doing a select * followed with your logic in the java code is a better approach

There are four main bottlenecks involved in querying a database.
The query itself - how long the query takes to execute on the server depends on indexes, table sizes etc.
The data volume of the results - there could be hundreds of columns or huge fields and all this data must be serialised and transported across the network to your client.
The processing of the data - java must walk the query results gathering the data it wants.
Maintaining the query - it takes manpower to maintain queries, simple ones cost little but complex ones can be a nightmare.
By careful consideration it should be possible to work out a balance between all four of these factors - it is unlikely that you will get the right answer without doing so.

You can query by two conditions:
SELECT * FROM MY_TABLE WHERE TYPE = 'A' OR TYPE = 'B'
This will do both for you at once, and if you want them sorted, you could do the same, but just add an order by keyword:
SELECT * FROM MY_TABLE WHERE TYPE = 'A' OR TYPE = 'B' ORDER BY TYPE ASC
This will sort the results by type, in ascending order.
EDIT:
I didn't notice that originally you wanted two different lists. In that case, you could just do this query, and then find the index where the type changes from 'A' to 'B' and copy the data into two arrays.

How to determine if a table contains a value in SQL?

I feel like I'm missing something very obvious here, but it seems that the only way to go about doing this is to get the value, and then see if it returns a null (empty) value, which I would rather not do.
Is there an equivalent to List.contains(Object o) in SQL? Or perhaps the JDBC has something of that nature? If so, what is it?
I am using Microsoft Access 2013.
Unfortunately I don't have any useful code to show, but here is the gist of what I am trying to do. It isn't anything unique at all. I want to have a method (Java) that returns the values of a user that are stored in the database. If the user has not previously been added to the database, the user should be added, and the default values of the user should be set. Then those newly created values will be returned. If a player has already been added to the database (with the username as the primary key), I don't want to overwrite the data that is already there.
I would also advise against using MS Access for this purpose, but if you are familiar with MS Office applications, the familiar UI/UX structure might help you get your footing and require less time to learn other database environments. However, MS Access tends to be quite limited, and I would advise considering alternative options if available.

The only way to see if an SQL table contains a row with some condition on a column is to actually make an SQL query. I don't see why you wouldn't do that. Just make sure that you have an index on the column that you will be constraining the results on. Also for better speed use count to prevent from retrieving all the data from the rows.
SELECT count(*) FROM foos WHERE bar = 'baz'
Assuming you have an index on the bar column this query should be pretty fast and all you have to do is check whether it returns > 0. If it does then you have rows matching your criteria.

You can use "IF EXISTS" which returns a boolean value of 1 or 0.
select
if(
exists( select * from date1 where current_date()>now() ),
'today > now',
'today is not > now'
) as 'today > now ?' ;
+--------------------+
| today > now? |
+--------------------+
| today is not > now |
+--------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Another Example:
SELECT IF(
EXISTS( SELECT col from tbl where id='n' ),
colX, colY
) AS 'result'
FROM TBL;

I'm also new to sql and I'm using Oracle.
In Oracle, suppose we have: TYPE: value.
We can use:
where value not in (select TYPE from table)
to make sure value not exist in the column TYPE of the table.
Don't know if it helps.

You can simply use Query with condition.
For example if you have to check records with particular coloumn, you can use where condition
select * from table where column1 = 'checkvalue'
You can use count property to check the no. of records existing with your specified conditon
select count(*) from table where column1 = 'checkvalue'

I have created the following method, which to my knowledge works perfectly. (Using the java.sql package)
public static containsUser(String username)
{
//connection is the Connection object used to connect to my Access database.
Statement statement = this.connection.createStatement();
//"Users" is the name of the table, "Username" is the primary key.
String sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE Username = '" + username + "'";
Result result = statement.executeQuery(sql);
//There is no need for a loop because the primary key is unique.
return result.next();
}
It's an extremely simple and extremely basic method, but hopefully it might help someone in the future.
If there is anything wrong with it, please let me know. I don't want anyone learning from or using poorly written code.
IMPORTANT EDIT: It is now over half a decade after I wrote the above content (both question and answer), and I now advise against the solution I illustrated above.
While it does work, it prioritizes a "Java-mindset-friendly" approach to SQL. In short, it is typically a bad idea to migrate paradigms and mindsets of one language to another, as it is inevitable that you will eventually find yourself trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The only way to make that work is to shave the corners off the square. The peg will then of course fit, but as you can imagine, starting with a circle peg in the first place would have been the better, cleaner, and less messy solution.
Instead, refer to the above upvoted answers for a more realistic, enterprise-friendly solution to this problem, especially as I imagine the people reading this are likely in a similar situation as I was when I originally wrote this.

Hibernate getting position of a row in a result set

I need to get an equivalent to this SQL that can be run using Hibernate. It doesn't work as is due to special characters like #.
SELECT place from (select #curRow := #curRow + 1 AS place, time, id FROM `testing`.`competitor` JOIN (SELECT #curRow := 0) r order by time) competitorList where competitorList.id=4;
My application is managing results of running competitions. The above query is selecting for a specific competitor, it's place based on his/her overall time.
For simplicity I'll only list the COMPETITOR table structure (only the relevant fields). My actual query involves a few joins, but they are not relevant for the question:
CREATE TABLE competitor {
id INT,
name VARCHAR,
time INT
}
Note that competitors are not already ordered by time, thus, the ID cannot be used as rank. As well, it is possible to have two competitors with the same overall time.
Any idea how I could make this work with Hibernate?

Hard to tell without a schema, but you may be able to use something like
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM testing ts
WHERE ts.score < $obj.score
where I am using the $ to stand for whatever Hibernate notation you need to refer to the live object.

I couldn't find any way to do this, so I had to change the way I'm calculating the position. I'm now taking the top results and am creating the ladder in Java, rather than in the SQL query.