Using a C Structure to Access the Storage Area - Analytics Database - Teradata Vantage

The type of intermediate results that an aggregate function needs to save depends on the type of calculation that the function performs.

Consider a standard deviation function STD_DEV(x) that uses the following equation:

The function can declare a C structure with components that match the necessary intermediate values:

typedef struct agr_storage {
    FLOAT n;
    FLOAT x_sq;
    FLOAT x_sum;
} AGR_Storage;

The function can then define a pointer to AGR_Storage that points to the FNC_Context_t.interim1 function argument.

Suppose the function declaration uses the following parameters:

void STD_DEV ( FNC_Phase     phase,
               FNC_Context_t *fctx,
               FLOAT         *x,
               FLOAT         *result,
               char          sqlstate[6] )
{
     ...
}

The following statement defines a pointer to AGR_Storage named s1 that points to the FNC_Context_t.interim1 function argument:

AGR_Storage *s1 = fctx->interim1;

The function can then easily access the storage area using the pointer to AGR_Storage. For example:

s1->n     = 0;
s1->x_sq  = 0;
s1->x_sum = 0;