Skip null values when counting with RANK() OVER

Question

Given a set of rows, with a field sometimes null and sometimes not:

SELECT 
   Date, TheThing
FROM MyData
ORDER BY Date


Date                     TheThing
-----------------------  --------
2016-03-09 08:17:29.867  a
2016-03-09 08:18:33.327  a
2016-03-09 14:32:01.240  NULL
2016-10-21 19:53:49.983  NULL
2016-11-12 03:25:21.753  b
2016-11-24 07:43:24.483  NULL
2016-11-28 16:06:23.090  b
2016-11-28 16:09:07.200  c
2016-12-10 11:21:55.807  c

I want to have a ranking column that counts the non-null values:

Date                     TheThing  DesiredTotal
-----------------------  --------  ------------
2016-03-09 08:17:29.867  a         1
2016-03-09 08:18:33.327  a         2
2016-03-09 14:32:01.240  NULL      2 <---notice it's still 2 (good)
2016-10-21 19:53:49.983  NULL      2 <---notice it's still 2 (good)
2016-11-12 03:25:21.753  b         3
2016-11-24 07:43:24.483  NULL      3 <---notice it's still 3 (good)
2016-11-28 16:06:23.090  b         4
2016-11-28 16:09:07.200  c         5
2016-12-10 11:21:55.807  c         6

I try the obvious:

SELECT 
   Date, TheThing, 
   RANK() OVER(ORDER BY Date) AS Total
FROM MyData
ORDER BY Date

But RANK() counts nulls:

Date                     TheThing  Total
-----------------------  --------  -----
2016-03-09 08:17:29.867  a         1
2016-03-09 08:18:33.327  a         2
2016-03-09 14:32:01.240  NULL      3 <--- notice it is 3 (bad)
2016-10-21 19:53:49.983  NULL      4 <--- notice it is 4 (bad)
2016-11-12 03:25:21.753  b         5 <--- and all the rest are wrong (bad)
2016-11-24 07:43:24.483  NULL      7
2016-11-28 16:06:23.090  b         8
2016-11-28 16:09:07.200  c         9
2016-12-10 11:21:55.807  c         10

How can i instruct RANK() (or DENSE_RANK()) to not count nulls?

Have you tried using a PARTITION?

Why yes! Much worse:

SELECT 
   Date, TheThing, 
   RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY(CASE WHEN TheThing IS NOT NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) ORDER BY Date) AS Total
FROM MyData
ORDER BY Date

But RANK() counts nulls:

Date                     TheThing  Total
-----------------------  --------  -----
2016-03-09 08:17:29.867  a         1
2016-03-09 08:18:33.327  a         2
2016-03-09 14:32:01.240  NULL      1 <--- reset to 1?
2016-10-21 19:53:49.983  NULL      2 <--- why go up?
2016-11-12 03:25:21.753  b         3 
2016-11-24 07:43:24.483  NULL      3 <--- didn't reset?
2016-11-28 16:06:23.090  b         4 
2016-11-28 16:09:07.200  c         5
2016-12-10 11:21:55.807  c         6

And now i randomly type things - frantic flailing.

SELECT 
   Date, TheThing, 
   RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY(CASE WHEN TheThing IS NOT NULL THEN 1 ELSE NULL END) ORDER BY Date) AS Total
FROM MyData
ORDER BY Date

SELECT 
   Date, TheThing, 
   DENSE_RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY(CASE WHEN TheThing IS NOT NULL THEN 1 ELSE NULL END) ORDER BY Date) AS Total
FROM MyData
ORDER BY Date

Edit: With all the answers, it took many iterations to find all the edge cases that i don't want. In the end what i conceptually wanted was OVER() in order to count. I had no idea OVER applied to anything other than RANK (and DENSE_RANK).

http://sqlfiddle.com/#!18/c6d87/1

Bonus Reading

• How to use RANK() in SQL Server
• RANK without counting nulls
• SQL Server 2012 PERCENT_RANK() Exclude NULLS
• Exclude null values using DENSE_RANK

Answer 1

I think you are looking for a cumulative count:

SELECT Date, TheThing, 
       COUNT(theThing) OVER (ORDER BY Date) AS Total
FROM MyData
ORDER BY Date;

Answer 2

Try this:

declare @tbl table (dt datetime, col int);
insert into @tbl values
('2016-03-09 08:17:29.867', 1),
('2016-03-09 08:18:33.327', 1),
('2016-03-09 14:32:01.240', NULL),
('2016-10-21 19:53:49.983', NULL),
('2016-11-12 03:25:21.753', 1),
('2016-11-24 07:43:24.483', NULL),
('2016-11-28 16:06:23.090', 1),
('2016-11-28 16:09:07.200', 1),
('2016-12-10 11:21:55.807', 1);

select dt,
       col,
       sum(case when col is null then 0 else 1 end) over (order by dt) rnk
from @tbl

The idea is really simple: if you assign 1 to non-null values and zero where the column is null, cumulative sum ordered by date is works exactly as rank excluding nulls.

Other way would be to use RANK combined with ROW_NUMBER, which will respect ties in Date column and works exactly as RANK respecting NULLs:

select dt,
       col,
       case when col is not null then 
           rank() over (order by dt)
       else 
           rank() over (order by dt) - row_number() over (partition by rnDiff order by dt)
       end rnk
from (
    select dt,
           col,
           row_number() over (order by dt) -
               row_number() over (partition by coalesce(col, 0) order by dt) rnDiff
    from @tbl
) a
order by dt