Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Querying

Histograms

Histograms are powerful analytical tools that express the distribution of items. For example, suppose you need to figure out from the order information in the Sales.OrderValues view how many small, medium, and large orders you have, based on the order values. In other words, you need a histogram with three steps. The extreme values (the minimum and maximum values) are what defines values as small, medium, or large. Suppose for the sake of simplicity that the minimum order value is 10 and the maximum is 40. Take the difference between the two extremes (40 – 10 = 30) and divide it by the number of steps (3) to get the step size. In this case, it’s 30 divided by 3, which is 10. So the boundaries of step 1 (small) would be 10 and 20; for ...