Compute a Difference(Delta) Between Two Columns on Different Rows in PL/SQL

We will use a very basic and easy approach. We will try to make it as simple as possible. We will start our PL/SQL block by defining our cursor. This cursor will store the basic table’s information with its delta. Then in the same cursor, we will use JOIN() to join our table’s current row with the same table’s next row. Through this, we can simply calculate the difference by subtracting the next column from the previous column values.

In our next step, we will move to our main BEGIN block. In this block, we will open our defined cursor and display the corresponding values. At the end, we will close our cursor.

Let’s set up an Environment

To understand how to Compute a Difference(Delta) Between Two Columns on Different Rows in PL/SQL we need a table on which we will perform our approach and examples related to it. Here we will consider a table called ‘w3wiki’ which contains information such as id, name, and score as Columns.

Calculating the difference between two columns is useful in data analysis. It can help identify trends in various sectors such as finance, healthcare, and inventory management. It can also be used to analyze day-to-day changes in stock prices, and medical diagnoses, and identify bottleneck products.

In this article, we are going to explore different ways to compute a difference(delta) between two columns on different rows in PL/SQL. We will go through various real-world use cases with some clear and concise examples.