DeltaForce¶ ↑

DeltaForce allows you to use some Postgres 8.4+ window functions in named scopes on your ActiveRecord models.

It is very much still a work in progress; please contribute if possible and let me know what I can do better!

<img src=“https://travis-ci.org/joelind/delta_force.png” />

DeltaForce only works with Rails 2.3. I will be adding Rails 3 compatibility shortly.

In your Gemfile:

gem "delta_force"

Consider the following schema and model:

create_table "foos", :force => true do |t|
  t.integer  "bar_id"
  t.float    "x"
  t.float    "y"
  t.float    "z"
  t.date     "period"
end

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  tracks_changes_over_time do |changes|
    changes.values :x, :y, :z, :over => :period, :by => :bar_id
  end
end

You can now get the opening and closing values by bar_id as follows:

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period

If the following Foo objects exist:

#<Foo id: 1, bar_id: 1, x: 1.0, y: 10.0, z: 100.0, period: "2011-03-11">
#<Foo id: 2, bar_id: 1, x: 2.0, y: 20.0, z: 200.0, period: "2011-03-10">
#<Foo id: 3, bar_id: 1, x: 3.0, y: 30.0, z: 300.0, period: "2011-03-09">
#<Foo id: 4, bar_id: 2, x: 4.0, y: 40.0, z: 400.0, period: "2011-03-08">
#<Foo id: 5, bar_id: 2, x: 5.0, y: 50.0, z: 500.0, period: "2011-03-07">
#<Foo id: 6, bar_id: 2, x: 6.0, y: 60.0, z: 600.0, period: "2011-03-06">
#<Foo id: 7, bar_id: 2, x: 7.0, y: 70.0, z: 700.0, period: "2011-03-05">

You can retrieve a set of modified Foo objects that have opening and closing values, partitioned by bar_id, for x, y, and z as follows:

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period
=> [#<Foo bar_id: 1>, #<Foo bar_id: 2>]

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period.first.opening_x
 => "3"

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period.first.closing_x
 => "1"

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period.first.closing_y
 => "10"

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period.first.opening_y
 => "30"

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period.first.opening_period
 => "2011-03-09"

Foo.changes_in_x_and_y_and_z_by_bar_id_over_period.first.closing_period
 => "2011-03-11"

Note that opening_* and closing_* values are not currently typecast. I’d like to support that in the future.

You can also retrieve a hash of the values for a given field *as of* the period as follows:

Foo.x_by_bar_id_as_of_period("2011-03-10")
=> {1=>2.0, 2=>4.0}

This hash contains the latest x on or before the specified period keyed by the bar_id.

DeltaForce uses Postgres 8.4+ window functions to partition data by an arbitrary key.

This has been tested against Postgres 8.4 and should also work with Postgres 9. Oracle provides the same set of functions, but I have not been able to test it against an Oracle instance yet.

Copyright © 2011 Joe Lind. See LICENSE for details.