Can somebody explain this?

Question

This would look better if it were in a fixed width font (viewable at [http://sites.google.com/site/jbo5112/oracle_problem]), but this is a direct copy out of my sqlplus window. I have not altered a single thing with my tables, querries, omitted anything, added anything, or relocated anything. I even made a copy of the table that was giving me problems, renaming some columns, removing other colums, and adding an id field so I wouldn't show important information. I still seem get the same strange problem below.
As far as I can tell, the two sum_1's should match and the two sum_2's should match. However, making a third table didn't show the problem. Am I missing something or has oracle lost its marbles? Please help me, I've wasted many, many long days trying to fix our data, and can't sort out what is right anymore.
SQL> describe my_table_name;
Name Null? Type
ID NUMBER
AOC NUMBER(9)
AOM NUMBER
ATC NUMBER(9)
ATM NUMBER
ROC NUMBER(9)
ROM NUMBER
RTC NUMBER(9)
RTM NUMBER
SQL> select
2 sum(aoc+roc + atc+rtc) sum_1a,
3 sum(aoc+roc)+sum(atc+rtc) sum_1b,
4 sum(aom+rom + atm+rtm) sum_2a,
5 sum(aom+rom)+sum(atm+rtm) sum_2b
6 from my_table_name;
SUM_1A SUM_1B SUM_2A SUM_2B
1169352 6857438 384755.106 13222465.8
Elapsed: 00:00:01.42
SQL> create table my_table as (select id, aoc col1, aom col2, atc col3, atm col4, roc col5, rom col6, rtc col7, rtm col8 from my_table_name);
Table created.
Elapsed: 00:00:02.01
SQL> select
2 sum(col1+col3 + col5+col7) sum_1a,
3 sum(col1+col3)+sum(col5+col7) sum_1b,
4 sum(col2+col4 + col6+col8) sum_2a,
5 sum(col2+col4)+sum(col6+col8) sum_2b
6 from my_table;
SUM_1A SUM_1B SUM_2A SUM_2B
1169352 1169352 384755.106 384755.106
Elapsed: 00:00:00.93
SQL>

Answer 1

You can just wrap \ tags around the code
As for the NULL values 1+1+null is undefined because null is undefined.  It's only in aggregate functions that Oracle is allowed to discard NULL values and just sum the non-null rows.
Justin
Edited by: Justin Cave on Feb 20, 2009 7:20 PM