Question 28

Film with the second largest cast

Instruction

  • Write a query to return the title of the film with the second-largest cast.

Table 1: film

       col_name       |  col_type
----------------------+--------------------------
 film_id              | integer
 title                | text
 description          | text
 release_year         | integer
 language_id          | smallint
 original_language_id | smallint
 rental_duration      | smallint
 rental_rate          | numeric
 length               | smallint
 replacement_cost     | numeric
 rating               | text

Table 2: film_actor

Films and their casts

  col_name   | col_type
-------------+--------------------------
 actor_id    | smallint
 film_id     | smallint

Sample results

  title
-----------
 SECOND LARGEST

Solution

postgres
WITH film_size AS (
	SELECT film_id,
	COUNT(*) AS actors_cnt
	FROM film_actor
	GROUP BY film_id
	ORDER BY actors_cnt DESC
	LIMIT 2
)
SELECT title
FROM film
WHERE film_id IN (
    SELECT film_id
    FROM film_size
    ORDER BY actors_cnt
    LIMIT 1
);

Explanation

This query is selecting the title of a movie with the smallest number of actors out of the two movies with the largest number of actors.

The first part of the query is creating a common table expression (CTE) called "film_size". This CTE is selecting the film_id and the count of actors in each film from the "film_actor" table. It then groups the results by the film_id and orders them by the count of actors in descending order. The "LIMIT 2" statement limits the results to only the top two movies with the most actors.

The second part of the query is selecting the title of the movie that has the smallest number of actors out of the two movies with the most actors. It does this by selecting the film_id from the "film_size" CTE and then selecting the title from the "film" table for the movie with the smallest number of actors. The "ORDER BY actors_cnt" and "LIMIT 1" statements ensure that only the movie with the smallest number of actors is returned.

Copied

Last Submission

postgres

No submission yet for this engine. Run and submit your query to save it here.

Copied
Expected results

Submit a query to compare against expected output.