Date: 2020-02-21 10:25:12 +0100
From: @bernardom29
To: SQL devs <>
Version: -- development
CC: @PedroTadim

Last updated: 2020-02-24 09:32:58 +0100

Comment 27576

Date: 2020-02-21 10:25:12 +0100
From: @bernardom29

The NTILE window function is returning incorrect results in some cases. In the example below, the function divides the result set in more buckets than specified in the function argument.

How to reproduce:
1 - Create table and add values

create table employees (dep varchar(10), name varchar(20), salary double, hire_date date);
insert into employees values
('mgmt', 'Smith',81,str_to_date('10-08-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('dev', 'Jones',55,str_to_date('9-08-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('sls', 'Williams',55,str_to_date('14-07-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('sls', 'Taylor',62,str_to_date('13-08-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('dev', 'Brown',62,str_to_date('6-06-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('mgmt', 'Davies',84,str_to_date('4-06-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('sls', 'Evans',87,str_to_date('1-09-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('sls', 'Wilson',72,str_to_date('21-09-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('sls', 'Thomas',72,str_to_date('12-06-2019', '%d-%m-%Y')),
('mgmt', 'Johnson',100,str_to_date('12-07-2019', '%d-%m-%Y'));

2 - Execute this query, which gives incorrect results

SELECT dep, name, salary, NTILE(4) OVER (ORDER BY hire_date) FROM employees;

It should divide the 10 rows into 4 buckets, but it returns a 5 for the last row, which is incorrect.
The function returns correct results in the case of 2 buckets, for example.

Comment 27577

Date: 2020-02-21 11:19:22 +0100
From: MonetDB Mercurial Repository <>

Changeset 670675a1ce57 made by Pedro Ferreira pedro.ferreira@monetdbsolutions.com in the MonetDB repo, refers to this bug.

For complete details, see https//devmonetdborg/hg/MonetDB?cmd=changeset;node=670675a1ce57

Changeset description:

Added test and fix for bug #6829. Changed ntile implementation for a more generic one