How to get missing year and months

Question

hi,
   I have to get count of each month of each year using SP
the parameters are date range , it can be
more than one year.
the problem is, in database there is data for few months only , but user can enter a big date range.
and i have show each month's count, if it does not exits then each month should show 0.
             one approach was to get the count existing data for each year-month in a temp table, then loop through to insert missing year-month and finally select them.
            second approach was to create temp table of year-month which is passed from parameter, buy subtracting two dates. then use left join to get the above result.
please suggest if there is any other way to accomplish the task?
yours sincerely

Answer 1

Can you show sample data + expected result?
SELECT COUNT(*) ,MONTH(dt) m, YEAR(dt) y FROM tbl
GROUP BY MONTH(dt), YEAR(dt)
but , I am only guessing, moreover , if you are using SQL Server 2008 and onwards take a look at grouping sets fetaure
SELECT custid, empid, YEAR(orderdate) AS orderyear, count(qty) AS qty
FROM dbo.Orders
GROUP BY GROUPING SETS
  ( custid          ),
  ( empid           ),
  ( YEAR(orderdate) )
Best Regards,Uri Dimant SQL Server MVP,
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/uri_dimant/
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