MS SQL Server 2012(及以后版本)有PERCENTILE_DISC函数，计算排序值的特定百分比。PERCENTILE_DISC(0.5)将计算中位数- https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh231327.aspx

这是我能想到的求中位数的最优解。示例中的名称基于Justin示例。确保表有索引 销售。SalesOrderHeader以索引列CustomerId和TotalDue的顺序存在。

SELECT
 sohCount.CustomerId,
 AVG(sohMid.TotalDue) as TotalDueMedian
FROM 
(SELECT 
  soh.CustomerId,
  COUNT(*) as NumberOfRows
FROM 
  Sales.SalesOrderHeader soh 
GROUP BY soh.CustomerId) As sohCount
CROSS APPLY 
    (Select 
       soh.TotalDue
    FROM 
    Sales.SalesOrderHeader soh 
    WHERE soh.CustomerId = sohCount.CustomerId 
    ORDER BY soh.TotalDue
    OFFSET sohCount.NumberOfRows / 2 - ((sohCount.NumberOfRows + 1) % 2) ROWS 
    FETCH NEXT 1 + ((sohCount.NumberOfRows + 1) % 2) ROWS ONLY
    ) As sohMid
GROUP BY sohCount.CustomerId

更新

我有点不确定哪种方法性能最好，所以我比较了我的方法Justin Grants和Jeff Atwoods，在一个批量中运行基于这三种方法的查询，每个查询的批量成本为:

没有指数:

我的30% Justin Grants 13% Jeff Atwoods 58%

还有index

我的3%。 Justin Grants 10% Jeff Atwoods 87%

I tried to see how well the queries scale if you have index by creating more data from around 14 000 rows by a factor of 2 up to 512 which means in the end around 7,2 millions rows. Note I made sure CustomeId field where unique for each time I did a single copy, so the proportion of rows compared to unique instance of CustomerId was kept constant. While I was doing this I ran executions where I rebuilt index afterwards, and I noticed the results stabilized at around a factor of 128 with the data I had to these values:

我的3%。 贾斯汀·格兰特5% Jeff Atwoods 92%

我想知道，在保持惟一CustomerId不变的情况下，扩展行数会如何影响性能，因此我设置了一个新的测试，在其中执行了上述操作。现在，批成本比率并没有稳定下来，而是不断分化，每个CustomerId平均大约有20行，最后每个这样唯一的Id大约有10000行。数字如下:

我的4% 贾斯汀60% 杰夫斯35%

通过比较结果，我确保我正确地实现了每个方法。 我的结论是，只要索引存在，我使用的方法通常更快。还要注意，本文针对这个特定问题推荐使用这种方法https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2314819&seqNum=5

进一步提高对该查询的后续调用的性能的一种方法是在辅助表中持久化计数信息。您甚至可以通过一个触发器来维护它，该触发器更新并保存有关依赖于CustomerId的SalesOrderHeader行计数的信息，当然您也可以简单地存储中值。

中找到

这是查找属性中值的最简单方法。

Select round(S.salary,4) median from employee S 
where (select count(salary) from station 
where salary < S.salary ) = (select count(salary) from station
where salary > S.salary)

2019 UPDATE: In the 10 years since I wrote this answer, more solutions have been uncovered that may yield better results. Also, SQL Server releases since then (especially SQL 2012) have introduced new T-SQL features that can be used to calculate medians. SQL Server releases have also improved its query optimizer which may affect perf of various median solutions. Net-net, my original 2009 post is still OK but there may be better solutions on for modern SQL Server apps. Take a look at this article from 2012 which is a great resource: https://sqlperformance.com/2012/08/t-sql-queries/median

本文发现，以下模式比所有其他选择都要快得多，至少在他们测试的简单模式上是这样。该解决方案比测试的最慢解决方案(PERCENTILE_CONT)快373x (!!)注意，这个技巧需要两个独立的查询，这可能不是在所有情况下都可行。它还需要SQL 2012或更高版本。

DECLARE @c BIGINT = (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.EvenRows);

SELECT AVG(1.0 * val)
FROM (
    SELECT val FROM dbo.EvenRows
     ORDER BY val
     OFFSET (@c - 1) / 2 ROWS
     FETCH NEXT 1 + (1 - @c % 2) ROWS ONLY
) AS x;

当然，仅仅因为2012年对一个模式的一次测试产生了很好的结果，您的实际情况可能会有所不同，特别是如果您使用的是SQL Server 2014或更高版本。如果性能对中值计算很重要，我强烈建议尝试并测试那篇文章中推荐的几个选项，以确保您找到了最适合您的模式的选项。

我还会特别小心地使用(SQL Server 2012新增的)函数PERCENTILE_CONT，这是这个问题的其他答案之一中推荐的，因为上面链接的文章发现这个内置函数比最快的解决方案慢373x。在过去的7年里，这种差异可能已经得到了改善，但就我个人而言，在验证它与其他解决方案的性能之前，我不会在大型表上使用这个函数。

2009年的原始帖子如下:

有很多方法可以做到这一点，它们的性能差别很大。下面是一个优化得特别好的解决方案，包括median、ROW_NUMBERs和性能。当涉及到执行期间生成的实际I/ o时，这是一个特别优的解决方案——它看起来比其他解决方案成本更高，但实际上要快得多。

该页还包含对其他解决方案和性能测试细节的讨论。请注意，如果有多行具有相同的中位数列值，则使用唯一列作为消歧器。

就像所有的数据库性能场景一样，总是尝试在真实的硬件上用真实的数据测试解决方案——你永远不知道什么时候对SQL Server优化器的更改或环境中的某个特性会使正常快速的解决方案变慢。

SELECT
   CustomerId,
   AVG(TotalDue)
FROM
(
   SELECT
      CustomerId,
      TotalDue,
      -- SalesOrderId in the ORDER BY is a disambiguator to break ties
      ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
         PARTITION BY CustomerId
         ORDER BY TotalDue ASC, SalesOrderId ASC) AS RowAsc,
      ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
         PARTITION BY CustomerId
         ORDER BY TotalDue DESC, SalesOrderId DESC) AS RowDesc
   FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader SOH
) x
WHERE
   RowAsc IN (RowDesc, RowDesc - 1, RowDesc + 1)
GROUP BY CustomerId
ORDER BY CustomerId;

使用COUNT聚合， 首先可以计算有多少行，并存储在一个名为@cnt的变量中。然后 你可以计算OFFSET-FETCH过滤器的参数来指定，基于数量排序， 要跳过多少行(偏移值)和筛选多少行(获取值)。

行数 跳过是(@cnt - 1) / 2。很明显，对于奇数，这个计算是正确的，因为 首先对单个中间值减去1，然后再除以2。

这也适用于偶数计数，因为表达式中使用的除法是 整数除法;所以，当一个偶数减去1时，你得到的是一个奇数。

When dividing that odd value by 2, the fraction part of the result (.5) is truncated. The number of rows to fetch is 2 - (@cnt % 2). The idea is that when the count is odd the result of the modulo operation is 1, and you need to fetch 1 row. When the count is even the result of the modulo operation is 0, and you need to fetch 2 rows. By subtracting the 1 or 0 result of the modulo operation from 2, you get the desired 1 or 2, respectively. Finally, to compute the median quantity, take the one or two result quantities, and apply an average after converting the input integer value to a numeric one as follows:

DECLARE @cnt AS INT = (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [Sales].[production].[stocks]);
SELECT AVG(1.0 * quantity) AS median
FROM ( SELECT quantity
FROM [Sales].[production].[stocks]
ORDER BY quantity
OFFSET (@cnt - 1) / 2 ROWS FETCH NEXT 2 - @cnt % 2 ROWS ONLY ) AS D;

查看SQL中位数计算的其他解决方案: “用MySQL计算中位数的简单方法”(解决方案大多与供应商无关)。