pandas

Comparison with SQL

Since many potential pandas users have some familiarity with SQL, this page is meant to provide some examples of how various SQL operations would be performed using pandas.

If you're new to pandas, you might want to first read through 10 Minutes to pandas<10min> to familiarize yourself with the library.

As is customary, we import pandas and numpy as follows:

python

import pandas as pd import numpy as np

Most of the examples will utilize the tips dataset found within pandas tests. We'll read the data into a DataFrame called tips and assume we have a database table of the same name and structure.

python

url = 'https://raw.github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/master/pandas/tests/data/tips.csv' tips = pd.read_csv(url) tips.head()

SELECT

In SQL, selection is done using a comma-separated list of columns you'd like to select (or a * to select all columns):

SELECT total_bill, tip, smoker, time
FROM tips
LIMIT 5;

With pandas, column selection is done by passing a list of column names to your DataFrame:

python

tips[['total_bill', 'tip', 'smoker', 'time']].head(5)

Calling the DataFrame without the list of column names would display all columns (akin to SQL's *).

WHERE

Filtering in SQL is done via a WHERE clause.

SELECT *
FROM tips
WHERE time = 'Dinner'
LIMIT 5;

DataFrames can be filtered in multiple ways; the most intuitive of which is using boolean indexing.

python

tips[tips['time'] == 'Dinner'].head(5)

The above statement is simply passing a Series of True/False objects to the DataFrame, returning all rows with True.

python

is_dinner = tips['time'] == 'Dinner' is_dinner.value_counts() tips[is_dinner].head(5)

Just like SQL's OR and AND, multiple conditions can be passed to a DataFrame using | (OR) and & (AND).

-- tips of more than $5.00 at Dinner meals
SELECT *
FROM tips
WHERE time = 'Dinner' AND tip > 5.00;

python

# tips of more than $5.00 at Dinner meals tips[(tips['time'] == 'Dinner') & (tips['tip'] > 5.00)]

-- tips by parties of at least 5 diners OR bill total was more than $45
SELECT *
FROM tips
WHERE size >= 5 OR total_bill > 45;

python

# tips by parties of at least 5 diners OR bill total was more than $45 tips[(tips['size'] >= 5) | (tips['total_bill'] > 45)]

NULL checking is done using the ~pandas.Series.notnull and ~pandas.Series.isnull methods.

python

frame = pd.DataFrame({'col1': ['A', 'B', np.NaN, 'C', 'D'],: 'col2': ['F', np.NaN, 'G', 'H', 'I']})

frame

Assume we have a table of the same structure as our DataFrame above. We can see only the records where col2 IS NULL with the following query:

SELECT *
FROM frame
WHERE col2 IS NULL;

python

frame[frame['col2'].isnull()]

Getting items where col1 IS NOT NULL can be done with ~pandas.Series.notnull.

SELECT *
FROM frame
WHERE col1 IS NOT NULL;

python

frame[frame['col1'].notnull()]

GROUP BY

In pandas, SQL's GROUP BY operations are performed using the similarly named ~pandas.DataFrame.groupby method. ~pandas.DataFrame.groupby typically refers to a process where we'd like to split a dataset into groups, apply some function (typically aggregation) , and then combine the groups together.

A common SQL operation would be getting the count of records in each group throughout a dataset. For instance, a query getting us the number of tips left by sex:

SELECT sex, count(*)
FROM tips
GROUP BY sex;
/*
Female     87
Male      157
*/

The pandas equivalent would be:

python

tips.groupby('sex').size()

Notice that in the pandas code we used ~pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy.size and not ~pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy.count. This is because ~pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy.count applies the function to each column, returning the number of not null records within each.

python

tips.groupby('sex').count()

Alternatively, we could have applied the ~pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy.count method to an individual column:

python

tips.groupby('sex')['total_bill'].count()

Multiple functions can also be applied at once. For instance, say we'd like to see how tip amount differs by day of the week - ~pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy.agg allows you to pass a dictionary to your grouped DataFrame, indicating which functions to apply to specific columns.

SELECT day, AVG(tip), COUNT(*)
FROM tips
GROUP BY day;
/*
Fri   2.734737   19
Sat   2.993103   87
Sun   3.255132   76
Thur  2.771452   62
*/

python

tips.groupby('day').agg({'tip': np.mean, 'day': np.size})

Grouping by more than one column is done by passing a list of columns to the ~pandas.DataFrame.groupby method.

SELECT smoker, day, COUNT(*), AVG(tip)
FROM tips
GROUP BY smoker, day;
/*
smoker day
No     Fri      4  2.812500
       Sat     45  3.102889
       Sun     57  3.167895
       Thur    45  2.673778
Yes    Fri     15  2.714000
       Sat     42  2.875476
       Sun     19  3.516842
       Thur    17  3.030000
*/

python

tips.groupby(['smoker', 'day']).agg({'tip': [np.size, np.mean]})

JOIN

JOINs can be performed with ~pandas.DataFrame.join or ~pandas.merge. By default, ~pandas.DataFrame.join will join the DataFrames on their indices. Each method has parameters allowing you to specify the type of join to perform (LEFT, RIGHT, INNER, FULL) or the columns to join on (column names or indices).

python

df1 = pd.DataFrame({'key': ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'],: 'value': np.random.randn(4)})
df2 = pd.DataFrame({'key': ['B', 'D', 'D', 'E'],: 'value': np.random.randn(4)})

Assume we have two database tables of the same name and structure as our DataFrames.

Now let's go over the various types of JOINs.

INNER JOIN

SELECT *
FROM df1
INNER JOIN df2
  ON df1.key = df2.key;

python

# merge performs an INNER JOIN by default pd.merge(df1, df2, on='key')

~pandas.merge also offers parameters for cases when you'd like to join one DataFrame's column with another DataFrame's index.

python

indexed_df2 = df2.set_index('key') pd.merge(df1, indexed_df2, left_on='key', right_index=True)

LEFT OUTER JOIN

-- show all records from df1
SELECT *
FROM df1
LEFT OUTER JOIN df2
  ON df1.key = df2.key;

python

# show all records from df1 pd.merge(df1, df2, on='key', how='left')

RIGHT JOIN

-- show all records from df2
SELECT *
FROM df1
RIGHT OUTER JOIN df2
  ON df1.key = df2.key;

python

# show all records from df2 pd.merge(df1, df2, on='key', how='right')

FULL JOIN

pandas also allows for FULL JOINs, which display both sides of the dataset, whether or not the joined columns find a match. As of writing, FULL JOINs are not supported in all RDBMS (MySQL).

-- show all records from both tables
SELECT *
FROM df1
FULL OUTER JOIN df2
  ON df1.key = df2.key;

python

# show all records from both frames pd.merge(df1, df2, on='key', how='outer')

UNION

UNION ALL can be performed using ~pandas.concat.

python

df1 = pd.DataFrame({'city': ['Chicago', 'San Francisco', 'New York City'],: 'rank': range(1, 4)})
df2 = pd.DataFrame({'city': ['Chicago', 'Boston', 'Los Angeles'],: 'rank': [1, 4, 5]})

SELECT city, rank
FROM df1
UNION ALL
SELECT city, rank
FROM df2;
/*
         city  rank
      Chicago     1
San Francisco     2
New York City     3
      Chicago     1
       Boston     4
  Los Angeles     5
*/

python

pd.concat([df1, df2])

SQL's UNION is similar to UNION ALL, however UNION will remove duplicate rows.

SELECT city, rank
FROM df1
UNION
SELECT city, rank
FROM df2;
-- notice that there is only one Chicago record this time
/*
         city  rank
      Chicago     1
San Francisco     2
New York City     3
       Boston     4
  Los Angeles     5
*/

In pandas, you can use ~pandas.concat in conjunction with ~pandas.DataFrame.drop_duplicates.

python

pd.concat([df1, df2]).drop_duplicates()

Pandas equivalents for some SQL analytic and aggregate functions

Top N rows with offset

-- MySQL
SELECT * FROM tips
ORDER BY tip DESC
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 5;

python

tips.nlargest(10+5, columns='tip').tail(10)

Top N rows per group

-- Oracle's ROW_NUMBER() analytic function
SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT
    t.*,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY day ORDER BY total_bill DESC) AS rn
  FROM tips t
)
WHERE rn < 3
ORDER BY day, rn;

python

(tips.assign(rn=tips.sort_values(['total_bill'], ascending=False): .groupby(['day']) .cumcount() + 1)
.query('rn < 3'): .sort_values(['day','rn'])

)

the same using rank(method='first') function

python

(tips.assign(rnk=tips.groupby(['day'])['total_bill']: .rank(method='first', ascending=False))
.query('rnk < 3'): .sort_values(['day','rnk'])

)

-- Oracle's RANK() analytic function
SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT
    t.*,
    RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY sex ORDER BY tip) AS rnk
  FROM tips t
  WHERE tip < 2
)
WHERE rnk < 3
ORDER BY sex, rnk;

Let's find tips with (rank < 3) per gender group for (tips < 2). Notice that when using rank(method='min') function rnk_min remains the same for the same tip (as Oracle's RANK() function)

python

(tips[tips['tip'] < 2]

.assign(rnk_min=tips.groupby(['sex'])['tip']: .rank(method='min'))

.query('rnk_min < 3') .sort_values(['sex','rnk_min'])

)

UPDATE

UPDATE tips
SET tip = tip*2
WHERE tip < 2;

python

tips.loc[tips['tip'] < 2, 'tip'] *= 2

DELETE

DELETE FROM tips
WHERE tip > 9;

In pandas we select the rows that should remain, instead of deleting them

python

tips = tips.loc[tips['tip'] <= 9]

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

comparison_with_sql.rst

comparison_with_sql.rst

Comparison with SQL

SELECT

WHERE

GROUP BY

JOIN

INNER JOIN

LEFT OUTER JOIN

RIGHT JOIN

FULL JOIN

UNION

Pandas equivalents for some SQL analytic and aggregate functions

Top N rows with offset

Top N rows per group

UPDATE

DELETE

Files

comparison_with_sql.rst

Latest commit

History

comparison_with_sql.rst

File metadata and controls

Comparison with SQL

SELECT

WHERE

GROUP BY

JOIN

INNER JOIN

LEFT OUTER JOIN

RIGHT JOIN

FULL JOIN

UNION

Pandas equivalents for some SQL analytic and aggregate functions

Top N rows with offset

Top N rows per group

UPDATE

DELETE