First, apologies for not responding sooner! It has been a busy week and I’m only now getting to my “weekend job” as volunteer webmaster & database manager for our local youth rugby football league.

BTW – I’m using MS SQL 2012 managed through MS Visual Studio 2012.

Many thanks for the suggested schema. At first reading, it looks like just what I need. I plan to take a crack this weekend at adapting your scripts to my existing schema. I’ll let you know how I get on.

One observation from a NON-expert when it comes to relational databases. Local, volunteer run, sports leagues, whether rugby, soccer, or whatever sport you like, are ubiquitous around the world. I did a fair bit of research online looking for a SQL script that basically amounted to a cheat sheet on how to set up tables/views and queries for a rugby football Results table and a Standings table – such as the topic of this thread. I could not find anything that I could easily adapt for the Standings. I am, in fact, quite surprised that some sports mad academic in the IT department at some university somewhere has not published online a set of “sports league” scripts for use by volunteers & amateurs like me.

Anyhow, many thanks for the help & advice!

Cheers,

Richard.

I’m assuming that you’re using Oracle or some other relational database ( and not one of those new-fangled No-SQL ones). I’m also assuming that points are awarded as follows :

a win is 4 points
a draw is 2 points
a bonus point for scoring 4 or more tries in a game (win or lose)
a bonus point for losing by 7 points or less

So…you don’t get another bonus point for 8 tries in a game. Also, you can get up to 2 bonus points if you lose the game, but only one at best, if you win.

I’ve created a simplified results table. It’s probably not the way you’ve implemented it, but it makes this example a bit simpler.

CREATE TABLE team_results(
    team_name VARCHAR2(30),
    opposition VARCHAR2(30),
    points_for NUMBER(3),
    tries NUMBER(2),
    points_ag NUMBER(3))
/

--
-- Now for some test data...
--
INSERT INTO team_results(
    team_name, opposition,
    points_for, tries, points_ag)
VALUES(
    'WALES', 'AUSTRALIA',
    12, 0 , 14)
/

INSERT INTO team_results(
   team_name, opposition,
   points_for, tries, points_ag)
VALUES(
    'WALES', 'NEW ZEALAND',
    12,1,33)
/

INSERT INTO team_results(
    team_name, opposition,
    points_for, tries, points_ag) 
VALUES(
    'WALES', 'FRANCE',
    26,1,17)
/

--
-- Unlike Wales, South Africa have scored four or more tries in a game th‎is season...
-- as well as having a draw...
--

INSERT INTO team_results(
    team_name, opposition,
    points_for, tries, points_ag) 
VALUES( 'SOUTH AFRICA', 'AUSTRALIA',
    31,5,9)
/

INSERT INTO team_results(
    team_name, opposition,
    points_for, tries, points_ag) 
VALUES(
    'SOUTH AFRICA', 'AUSTRALIA',
    19,2,26)
/

INSERT INTO team_results(
    team_name, opposition,
    points_for, tries, points_ag) 
VALUES(
    'SOUTH AFRICA', 'ENGLAND',
    14,1,14)
/

COMMIT;

So, if we look at the results:

SELECT team_name, points_for, points_ag, tries 
FROM team_results
ORDER BY team_name
/

TEAM_NAME		       POINTS_FOR  POINTS_AG	  TRIES
------------------------------ ---------- ---------- ----------
SOUTH AFRICA			       19	  26	      2
SOUTH AFRICA			       31	   9	      5
SOUTH AFRICA			       14	  14	      1
WALES				       12	  33	      1
WALES				       12	  14	      0
WALES				       26	  17	      1

6 rows selected.

SQL>

… for Wales, we can see that they’ll get One point for the loss to Australia ( less than 7 point margin), nothing from their defeat to New Zealand, and four points from their win over France.
This makes a total of 5 points, including 1 bonus points.

As for South Africa, they’ll get five points from their win over Australia ( 4 plus a bonus point for tries scored),
One for their defeat to Australia ( 7 points or less)
And two points from their draw against England.
This give them a total of 8 points (including 2 bonus points).

To derive this from the raw data, we can use the CASE statement in our query.
We’re also using an in-line view to tidy up the calculation of overall points

SELECT team_name, pld, bp, bp+points as total_points
FROM (
    SELECT team_name,
        COUNT(team_name) as pld,
        SUM(
            CASE 
                WHEN points_for > points_ag THEN 4
                WHEN points_for = points_ag THEN 2
                ELSE 0
           END) as points,
        SUM(
            CASE
                WHEN tries >= 4 THEN 1
                ELSE 0
           END) +
        SUM(
            CASE
                WHEN points_ag > points_for AND points_for + 7 >= points_ag THEN 1
                ELSE 0
            END) as bp
    FROM team_results
    GROUP BY team_name)
/

Run this and we get :

TEAM_NAME			      PLD	  BP TOTAL_POINTS
------------------------------ ---------- ---------- ------------
SOUTH AFRICA				3	   2		8
WALES					3	   1		5

SQL> 

I think the short answer to your question about bonus point calculation is to
use the CASE statement, which as you can see, can handle compound conditions
(lost, but by 7 points or less).

There are a couple of posts which may be of interest ( although they’re based
on the round-ball game, rather than the oval one).
This post outlines some possibilities when designing the database.
This one makes use of Oracle’s RANK function so that you can order your result
set by multiple criteria easily.

HTH

Mike

P.S. Sorry some of the formatting is a bit wonky. Not quite sure why this is but I hope you get the gist.

However, I was wondering do you, or other readers, have any ideas or pointers on how best to handle rugby’s bonus points; i.e. 1 BP for 4 tries and/or 1 BP for losing team coming within 7 points or less of the winning score.

I have written a view for Standings that reads from a Master Results table. The Standings table is correct except for one statistic: Bonus Points. Unfortunately, as written, the logic in the View does not distinguish between the losing team coming within 7 points of the winner but awards a bonus point to both teams. I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to fix this.

I’ve posted on a couple of Forums but have not had a response.
Apologies if this is not the right place or correct protocol for posting.