# How to group data in SQL with a catch-all bucket

In this article I’ll show you how to group data into defined buckets, putting everything that doesn’t fit into the defined buckets into a catch-all bucket.

For example, suppose my data is online ads, and I store each ad’s current position in an integer column. The ads compete against ads from other advertisers, and the top bidder gets position 1. I want to count how many ads are in positions 1 through 5, with 6 through infinity lumped together. The results should look something like the following:

### Setup and sample data

Here are some queries to create 1000 rows of sample data, with ranks from 1 to 20. First, for Microsoft SQL Server:

create table #ad (
rank int not null
)

select top 1000 cast(rand() * 19 + 1 as int)
from number;

And for MySQL:

create table ad (rank int not null);
select rand() * 19 + 1
from number limit 1000;

### The queries

Here’s a query for Microsoft SQL Server:

select
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end as rank,
count(*) as num
group by
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end
order by
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end;

And for MySQL:

select
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end as rank,
count(*) as num
group by
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end
order by
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end;

The results on my data set are as follows:

Your results will vary because of the RAND() function.

### Shortening the code for readability

In MySQL, it’s possible to make the query a bit shorter by referring to the result’s rank column in the GROUP BY and ORDER BY clauses. This only works if the column is aliased to a different name than it has in the table. Aliasing a column in the result set to the same name as a column in the base table will confuse MySQL. For example, this works fine:

select
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end as bucket,
count(*) as num
group by bucket
order by bucket

This, however, doesn’t:

select
case when rank <= 5 then rank
else 6
end as rank,
count(*) as num
order by rank;
This query works fine on earlier versions of MySQL such as 3.23, but in later versions such as 5.x, it groups and orders by the table’s rank column, not the result’s. The result set changes to the following: