How do I group results in batches of consecutive rows with the same 'module'

I'm looking for a seemingly very simple SELECT.

I have a logging table LOGGING of which three columns are of interest to me: MODULE (text), PDATE (date), PTEXT (text).

Actually, I care only about the first two columns, i.e. which module has been called at all (which is the name of a procedure in a PL/SQL package). The date I only need for ordering (ASC) the result, and one could also use the ID column for the same purpose, which is an auto-incremented integer value (Oracle: sequence.nextval).

Since the logging produces waaaaayyyyy too much data, tens to hundreds of PTEXT entries for a single MODULE, I would like to condense the MODULE rows, which seems to call for a simple GROUP BY.

Maybe this illustrates the issue:

I start with the inner query below, which gives me the correct sequence of "module" calls, but does not aggregate them (example 1 above). So my idea was okay, I get the correct result in the correct order - so if I now select just the one column I'm interested in and use "group by" on this ordered(!) data I should get what I want - but adding the "group by" below gives me a COMPLETELY different order. Apparently my knowledge about what "group by" does is inadequate.

SELECT module FROM
(
  SELECT module, pdate FROM logging
  ORDER BY pdate asc
)
--GROUP BY module

Result without "GROUP BY" (first 12 lines):

set_option_value
set_option_value
set_option_value
set_option_value
get_rights_usecase
get_rights_usecase
get_rights_usecase
get_rights_usecase
get_rights_usecase
get_rights_usecase
get_fun_AppOptionsSingleVal
get_rights_usecase
...

Result incl. "GROUP BY":

get_fun_AppOptionsSingleVal
get_option_value
get_parameter
get_usecase_customer
get_kungesId_FY_cusper
fill_missing_products
update_chart_budget_uc1
get_Berein
set_hierarchy
get_element_num_value
icas_dyn_create_chart_table
get_xmlTemplate
...

As one can see the "GROUP BY" produces a completely different order.

What I WOULD HAVE WANTED:

```
set_option_value
get_ri

The question is which of the pdates for a module do you want to use for ordering purposes?

If you are happy to use the largest, you could use:

select module from logging order by max(pdate);

--- EDIT

I think I get it now - you probably want something like this:

select module
from( select module, 
             sum(module_step) over (order by pdate rows unbounded preceding) 
                 as batch_number, 
             pdate
      from( select module, 
                   case lag(module) over (order by pdate) when module then 0 
                        else 1 end as module_step, 
                   pdate from logging) )
group by module, batch_number
order by batch_number;

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#4485, answer score: 5