What Is SQL?
What Is SQL?
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SQL is a language to operate databases; it includes database creation, deletion, fetching rows, modifying
rows, etc. SQL is an ANSI AmericanNationalStandardsInstitute standard language, but there are many
different versions of the SQL language.
What is SQL?
SQL is Structured Query Language, which is a computer language for storing, manipulating and retrieving
data stored in a relational database.
SQL is the standard language for Relational Database System. All the Relational Database Management
Systems RDMS like MySQL, MS Access, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Postgres and SQL Server use SQL as
their standard database language.
Why SQL?
SQL is widely popular because it offers the following advantages −
• Allows users to define the data in a database and manipulate that data.
• Allows to embed within other languages using SQL modules, libraries & pre-compilers.
• 1978 − IBM worked to develop Codd's ideas and released a product named System/R.
• 1986 − IBM developed the first prototype of relational database and standardized by ANSI. The
first relational database was released by Relational Software which later came to be known as
Oracle.
SQL Process
When you are executing an SQL command for any RDBMS, the system determines the best way to carry
out your request and SQL engine figures out how to interpret the task.
• Query Dispatcher
• Optimization Engines
• Classic Query Engine
• SQL Query Engine, etc.
A classic query engine handles all the non-SQL queries, but a SQL query engine won't handle logical files.
SQL Commands
The standard SQL commands to interact with relational databases are CREATE, SELECT, INSERT,
UPDATE, DELETE and DROP. These commands can be classified into the following groups based on
their nature −
DDL - Data Definition Language
CREATE
1
Creates a new table, a view of a table, or other object in the database.
ALTER
2
Modifies an existing database object, such as a table.
DROP
3
Deletes an entire table, a view of a table or other objects in the database.
SELECT
1
Retrieves certain records from one or more tables.
INSERT
2
Creates a record.
UPDATE
3
Modifies records.
DELETE
4
Deletes records.
DCL - Data Control Language
GRANT
1
Gives a privilege to user.
REVOKE
2
Takes back privileges granted from user.
What is RDBMS?
RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System. RDBMS is the basis for SQL, and for all
modern database systems like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft Access.
A Relational database management system RDBMS is a database management system DBMS that is based
on the relational model as introduced by E. F. Codd.
What is a table?
The data in an RDBMS is stored in database objects which are called as tables. This table is basically a
collection of related data entries and it consists of numerous columns and rows.
Remember, a table is the most common and simplest form of data storage in a relational database. The
following program is an example of a CUSTOMERS table −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
What is a field?
Every table is broken up into smaller entities called fields. The fields in the CUSTOMERS table consist of
ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS and SALARY.
A field is a column in a table that is designed to maintain specific information about every record in the
table.
What is a Record or a Row?
A record is also called as a row of data is each individual entry that exists in a table. For example, there are
7 records in the above CUSTOMERS table. Following is a single row of data or record in the CUSTOMERS
table −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
What is a column?
A column is a vertical entity in a table that contains all information associated with a specific field in a
table.
For example, a column in the CUSTOMERS table is ADDRESS, which represents location description and
would be as shown below −
+-----------+
| ADDRESS |
+-----------+
| Ahmedabad |
| Delhi |
| Kota |
| Mumbai |
| Bhopal |
| MP |
| Indore |
+----+------+
It is very important to understand that a NULL value is different than a zero value or a field that contains
spaces. A field with a NULL value is the one that has been left blank during a record creation.
SQL Constraints
Constraints are the rules enforced on data columns on a table. These are used to limit the type of data that
can go into a table. This ensures the accuracy and reliability of the data in the database.
Constraints can either be column level or table level. Column level constraints are applied only to one
column whereas, table level constraints are applied to the entire table.
Following are some of the most commonly used constraints available in SQL −
• NOT NULL Constraint − Ensures that a column cannot have a NULL value.
• DEFAULT Constraint − Provides a default value for a column when none is specified.
• UNIQUE Constraint − Ensures that all the values in a column are different.
• CHECK Constraint − The CHECK constraint ensures that all values in a column satisfy certain
conditions.
• INDEX − Used to create and retrieve data from the database very quickly.
Data Integrity
The following categories of data integrity exist with each RDBMS −
• Domain Integrity − Enforces valid entries for a given column by restricting the type, the format,
or the range of values.
• Referential integrity − Rows cannot be deleted, which are used by other records.
• User-Defined Integrity − Enforces some specific business rules that do not fall into entity,
domain or referential integrity.
Database Normalization
Database normalization is the process of efficiently organizing data in a database. There are two reasons
of this normalization process −
• Eliminating redundant data, for example, storing the same data in more than one table.
Both these reasons are worthy goals as they reduce the amount of space a database consumes and ensures
that data is logically stored. Normalization consists of a series of guidelines that help guide you in creating
a good database structure.
Normalization guidelines are divided into normal forms; think of a form as the format or the way a
database structure is laid out. The aim of normal forms is to organize the database structure, so that it
complies with the rules of first normal form, then second normal form and finally the third normal form.
It is your choice to take it further and go to the fourth normal form, fifth normal form and so on, but in
general, the third normal form is more than enough.
There are many popular RDBMS available to work with. This tutorial gives a brief overview of some of the
most popular RDBMS’s. This would help you to compare their basic features.
MySQL
MySQL is an open source SQL database, which is developed by a Swedish company – MySQL AB. MySQL
is pronounced as "my ess-que-ell," in contrast with SQL, pronounced "sequel."
MySQL is supporting many different platforms including Microsoft Windows, the major Linux
distributions, UNIX, and Mac OS X.
MySQL has free and paid versions, depending on its usage non − commercial / commercial and features.
MySQL comes with a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user and robust SQL database server.
History
• Development of MySQL by Michael Widenius & David Axmark beginning in 1994.
• Windows Version was released on the 8th January 1998 for Windows 95 and NT.
• Version 3.23: beta from June 2000, production release January 2001.
• Version 4.0: beta from August 2002, production release March 2003 unions .
• Version 4.01: beta from August 2003, Jyoti adopts MySQL for database tracking.
• Version 4.1: beta from June 2004, production release October 2004.
• Version 5.0: beta from March 2005, production release October 2005.
Features
• High Performance.
• High Availability.
• Scalability and Flexibility Run anything.
• Robust Transactional Support.
• Web and Data Warehouse Strengths.
• Strong Data Protection.
• Comprehensive Application Development.
• Management Ease.
• Open Source Freedom and 24 x 7 Support.
• Lowest Total Cost of Ownership.
MS SQL Server
MS SQL Server is a Relational Database Management System developed by Microsoft Inc. Its primary
query languages are −
• T-SQL
• ANSI SQL
History
• 1987 - Sybase releases SQL Server for UNIX.
• 1989 - Microsoft, Sybase, and Aston-Tate release SQL Server 1.0 for OS/2.
• 1990 - SQL Server 1.1 is released with support for Windows 3.0 clients.
• 2001 - Microsoft releases XML for SQL Server Web Release 1 download .
Features
• High Performance
• High Availability
• Database mirroring
• Database snapshots
• CLR integration
• Service Broker
• DDL triggers
• Ranking functions
• Row version-based isolation levels
• XML integration
• TRY...CATCH
• Database Mail
ORACLE
It is a very large multi-user based database management system. Oracle is a relational database
management system developed by 'Oracle Corporation'.
Oracle works to efficiently manage its resources, a database of information among the multiple clients
requesting and sending data in the network.
It is an excellent database server choice for client/server computing. Oracle supports all major operating
systems for both clients and servers, including MSDOS, NetWare, UnixWare, OS/2 and most UNIX
flavors.
History
Oracle began in 1977 and celebrating its 32 wonderful years in the industry from1977to2009 .
• 1977 - Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories to
undertake development work.
• 1979 - Version 2.0 of Oracle was released and it became first commercial relational database and
first SQL database. The company changed its name to Relational Software Inc. RSI .
• 1983 - Oracle released version 3.0, rewritten in C language and ran on multiple platforms.
• 1984 - Oracle version 4.0 was released. It contained features like concurrency control - multi-
version read consistency, etc.
• 1985 - Oracle version 4.0 was released. It contained features like concurrency control - multi-
version read consistency, etc.
• 2007 - Oracle released Oracle11g. The new version focused on better partitioning, easy migration,
etc.
Features
• Concurrency
• Read Consistency
• Locking Mechanisms
• Quiesce Database
• Portability
• Self-managing database
• SQL*Plus
• ASM
• Scheduler
• Resource Manager
• Data Warehousing
• Materialized views
• Bitmap indexes
• Table compression
• Parallel Execution
• Analytic SQL
• Data mining
• Partitioning
MS ACCESS
This is one of the most popular Microsoft products. Microsoft Access is an entry-level database
management software. MS Access database is not only inexpensive but also a powerful database for small-
scale projects.
MS Access uses the Jet database engine, which utilizes a specific SQL language dialect
sometimesreferredtoasJetSQL .
MS Access comes with the professional edition of MS Office package. MS Access has easyto-use intuitive
graphical interface.
• 1993 - Access 1.1 released to improve compatibility with inclusion the Access Basic programming
language.
• 2007 - Access 2007, a new database format was introduced ACCDB which supports complex data
types such as multi valued and attachment fields.
Features
• Users can create tables, queries, forms and reports and connect them together with macros.
• Option of importing and exporting the data to many formats including Excel, Outlook, ASCII,
dBase, Paradox, FoxPro, SQL Server, Oracle, ODBC, etc.
• There is also the Jet Database format MDBorACCDBinAccess2007 , which can contain the
application and data in one file. This makes it very convenient to distribute the entire application to
another user, who can run it in disconnected environments.
• Microsoft Access offers parameterized queries. These queries and Access tables can be referenced
from other programs like VB6 and .NET through DAO or ADO.
• The desktop editions of Microsoft SQL Server can be used with Access as an alternative to the Jet
Database Engine.
• Microsoft Access is a file server-based database. Unlike the client-server relational database
management systems RDBMS , Microsoft Access does not implement database triggers, stored
procedures or transaction logging.
SQL is followed by a unique set of rules and guidelines called Syntax. This tutorial gives you a quick start
with SQL by listing all the basic SQL Syntax.
All the SQL statements start with any of the keywords like SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, ALTER,
DROP, CREATE, USE, SHOW and all the statements end with a semicolon ; .
The most important point to be noted here is that SQL is case insensitive, which means SELECT and
select have same meaning in SQL statements. Whereas, MySQL makes difference in table names. So, if
you are working with MySQL, then you need to give table names as they exist in the database.
Various Syntax in SQL
All the examples given in this tutorial have been tested with a MySQL server.
SQL IN Clause
SELECT SUM(column_name)
FROM table_name
WHERE CONDITION
GROUP BY column_name;
SELECT COUNT(column_name)
FROM table_name
WHERE CONDITION;
SELECT SUM(column_name)
FROM table_name
WHERE CONDITION
GROUP BY column_name
HAVING (arithematic function condition);
DESC table_name;
UPDATE table_name
SET column1 = value1, column2 = value2....columnN=valueN
[ WHERE CONDITION ];
USE database_name;
COMMIT;
ROLLBACK;
SQL Data Type is an attribute that specifies the type of data of any object. Each column, variable and
expression has a related data type in SQL. You can use these data types while creating your tables. You can
choose a data type for a table column based on your requirement.
SQL Server offers six categories of data types for your use which are listed below −
tinyint 0 255
bit 0 1
Note − Here, datetime has 3.33 milliseconds accuracy where as smalldatetime has 1 minute accuracy.
char
1
Maximum length of 8,000 characters.Fixedlengthnon − Unicodecharacters
varchar
2
Maximum of 8,000 characters.Variable − lengthnon − Unicodedata .
varcharmax
3 Maximum length of 2E + 31 characters, Variable-length non-Unicode data
SQLServer2005only .
text
4
Variable-length non-Unicode data with a maximum length of 2,147,483,647 characters.
nchar
1
Maximum length of 4,000 characters.FixedlengthUnicode
nvarchar
2
Maximum length of 4,000 characters.VariablelengthUnicode
nvarcharmax
3
Maximum length of 2E + 31 characters SQLServer2005only .VariablelengthUnicode
ntext
4
Maximum length of 1,073,741,823 characters. VariablelengthUnicode
binary
1
Maximum length of 8,000 bytesFixed − lengthbinarydata
varbinary
2
Maximum length of 8,000 bytes.Variablelengthbinarydata
varbinarymax
3
Maximum length of 2E + 31 bytes SQLServer2005only . VariablelengthBinarydata
4
image
sql_variant
1
Stores values of various SQL Server-supported data types, except text, ntext, and timestamp.
timestamp
2
Stores a database-wide unique number that gets updated every time a row gets updated
uniqueidentifier
3
Stores a globally unique identifier GUID
xml
4
Stores XML data. You can store xml instances in a column or a variable SQLServer2005only .
cursor
5
Reference to a cursor object
table
6
Stores a result set for later processing
• Arithmetic operators
• Comparison operators
• Logical operators
• Operators used to negate conditions
Show Examples
* Multiplication Multiplies values on either side of the operator. a * b will give 200
/ Division Divides left hand operand by right hand operand. b / a will give 2
Show Examples
Checks if the value of left operand is not less than the value
!< a ! < b is false.
of right operand, if yes then condition becomes true.
Show Examples
ALL
1
The ALL operator is used to compare a value to all values in another value set.
AND
2 The AND operator allows the existence of multiple conditions in an SQL statement's
WHERE clause.
ANY
3 The ANY operator is used to compare a value to any applicable value in the list as per the
condition.
BETWEEN
4 The BETWEEN operator is used to search for values that are within a set of values, given the
minimum value and the maximum value.
5
EXISTS
The EXISTS operator is used to search for the presence of a row in a specified table that
meets a certain criterion.
IN
6
The IN operator is used to compare a value to a list of literal values that have been specified.
LIKE
7
The LIKE operator is used to compare a value to similar values using wildcard operators.
NOT
8 The NOT operator reverses the meaning of the logical operator with which it is used. Eg:
NOT EXISTS, NOT BETWEEN, NOT IN, etc. This is a negate operator.
OR
9 The OR operator is used to combine multiple conditions in an SQL statement's WHERE
clause.
IS NULL
10
The NULL operator is used to compare a value with a NULL value.
UNIQUE
11
The UNIQUE operator searches every row of a specified table for uniqueness noduplicates .
An expression is a combination of one or more values, operators and SQL functions that evaluate to a
value. These SQL EXPRESSIONs are like formulae and they are written in query language. You can also
use them to query the database for a specific set of data.
Syntax
Consider the basic syntax of the SELECT statement as follows −
SELECT column1, column2, columnN
FROM table_name
WHERE [CONDITION|EXPRESSION];
There are different types of SQL expressions, which are mentioned below −
• Boolean
• Numeric
• Date
Boolean Expressions
SQL Boolean Expressions fetch the data based on matching a single value. Following is the syntax −
The following table is a simple example showing the usage of various SQL Boolean Expressions −
Numeric Expression
These expressions are used to perform any mathematical operation in any query. Following is the syntax −
There are several built-in functions like avg , sum , count , etc., to perform what is known as the aggregate
data calculations against a table or a specific table column.
Date Expressions
Date Expressions return current system date and time values −
The SQL CREATE DATABASE statement is used to create a new SQL database.
Syntax
The basic syntax of this CREATE DATABASE statement is as follows −
Make sure you have the admin privilege before creating any database. Once a database is created, you can
check it in the list of databases as follows −
The SQL DROP DATABASE statement is used to drop an existing database in SQL schema.
Syntax
The basic syntax of DROP DATABASE statement is as follows −
Example
If you want to delete an existing database <testDB>, then the DROP DATABASE statement would be as
shown below −
NOTE − Be careful before using this operation because by deleting an existing database would result in
loss of complete information stored in the database.
Make sure you have the admin privilege before dropping any database. Once a database is dropped, you
can check it in the list of the databases as shown below −
When you have multiple databases in your SQL Schema, then before starting your operation, you would
need to select a database where all the operations would be performed.
The SQL USE statement is used to select any existing database in the SQL schema.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the USE statement is as shown below −
USE DatabaseName;
Example
You can check the available databases as shown below −
Now, if you want to work with the AMROOD database, then you can execute the following SQL command
and start working with the AMROOD database.
Creating a basic table involves naming the table and defining its columns and each column's data type.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the CREATE TABLE statement is as follows −
CREATE TABLE is the keyword telling the database system what you want to do. In this case, you want to
create a new table. The unique name or identifier for the table follows the CREATE TABLE statement.
Then in brackets comes the list defining each column in the table and what sort of data type it is. The
syntax becomes clearer with the following example.
A copy of an existing table can be created using a combination of the CREATE TABLE statement and the
SELECT statement. You can check the complete details at Create Table Using another Table.
Example
The following code block is an example, which creates a CUSTOMERS table with an ID as a primary key
and NOT NULL are the constraints showing that these fields cannot be NULL while creating records in
this table −
You can verify if your table has been created successfully by looking at the message displayed by the SQL
server, otherwise you can use the DESC command as follows −
Now, you have CUSTOMERS table available in your database which you can use to store the required
information related to customers.
The SQL DROP TABLE statement is used to remove a table definition and all the data, indexes, triggers,
constraints and permission specifications for that table.
NOTE − You should be very careful while using this command because once a table is deleted then all the
information available in that table will also be lost forever.
Syntax
The basic syntax of this DROP TABLE statement is as follows −
Example
Let us first verify the CUSTOMERS table and then we will delete it from the database as shown below −
This means that the CUSTOMERS table is available in the database, so let us now drop it as shown below.
Now, if you would try the DESC command, then you will get the following error −
Here, TEST is the database name which we are using for our examples.
The SQL INSERT INTO Statement is used to add new rows of data to a table in the database.
Syntax
There are two basic syntaxes of the INSERT INTO statement which are shown below.
Here, column1, column2, column3,...columnN are the names of the columns in the table into which you
want to insert the data.
You may not need to specify the columns name in the SQL query if you are adding values for all the
columns of the table. But make sure the order of the values is in the same order as the columns in the
table.
Example
The following statements would create six records in the CUSTOMERS table.
You can create a record in the CUSTOMERS table by using the second syntax as shown below.
All the above statements would produce the following records in the CUSTOMERS table as shown below.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Syntax
The basic syntax of the SELECT statement is as follows −
Here, column1, column2... are the fields of a table whose values you want to fetch. If you want to fetch all
the fields available in the field, then you can use the following syntax.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code is an example, which would fetch the ID, Name and Salary fields of the customers
available in CUSTOMERS table.
+----+----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | SALARY |
+----+----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+----------+
If you want to fetch all the fields of the CUSTOMERS table, then you should use the following query.
The SQL WHERE clause is used to specify a condition while fetching the data from a single table or by
joining with multiple tables. If the given condition is satisfied, then only it returns a specific value from
the table. You should use the WHERE clause to filter the records and fetching only the necessary records.
The WHERE clause is not only used in the SELECT statement, but it is also used in the UPDATE,
DELETE statement, etc., which we would examine in the subsequent chapters.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the SELECT statement with the WHERE clause is as shown below.
You can specify a condition using the comparison or logical operators like >, <, =, LIKE, NOT, etc. The
following examples would make this concept clear.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code is an example which would fetch the ID, Name and Salary fields from the
CUSTOMERS table, where the salary is greater than 2000 −
The following query is an example, which would fetch the ID, Name and Salary fields from the
CUSTOMERS table for a customer with the name Hardik.
Here, it is important to note that all the strings should be given inside single quotes ″ . Whereas, numeric
values should be given without any quote as in the above example.
+----+----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | SALARY |
+----+----------+----------+
| 5 | Hardik | 8500.00 |
+----+----------+----------+
The SQL AND & OR operators are used to combine multiple conditions to narrow data in an SQL
statement. These two operators are called as the conjunctive operators.
These operators provide a means to make multiple comparisons with different operators in the same SQL
statement.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the AND operator with a WHERE clause is as follows −
You can combine N number of conditions using the AND operator. For an action to be taken by the SQL
statement, whether it be a transaction or a query, all conditions separated by the AND must be TRUE.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example, which would fetch the ID, Name and Salary fields from the CUSTOMERS table,
where the salary is greater than 2000 and the age is less than 25 years −
+----+-------+----------+
| ID | NAME | SALARY |
+----+-------+----------+
| 6 | Komal | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 10000.00 |
+----+-------+----------+
The OR Operator
The OR operator is used to combine multiple conditions in an SQL statement's WHERE clause.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the OR operator with a WHERE clause is as follows −
You can combine N number of conditions using the OR operator. For an action to be taken by the SQL
statement, whether it be a transaction or query, the only any ONE of the conditions separated by the OR
must be TRUE.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code block hasa query, which would fetch the ID, Name and Salary fields from the
CUSTOMERS table, where the salary is greater than 2000 OR the age is less than 25 years.
+----+----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | SALARY |
+----+----------+----------+
| 3 | kaushik | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+----------+
The SQL UPDATE Query is used to modify the existing records in a table. You can use the WHERE
clause with the UPDATE query to update the selected rows, otherwise all the rows would be affected.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the UPDATE query with a WHERE clause is as follows −
UPDATE table_name
SET column1 = value1, column2 = value2...., columnN = valueN
WHERE [condition];
You can combine N number of conditions using the AND or the OR operators.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following query will update the ADDRESS for a customer whose ID number is 6 in the table.
SQL> UPDATE CUSTOMERS
SET ADDRESS = 'Pune'
WHERE ID = 6;
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | Pune | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
If you want to modify all the ADDRESS and the SALARY column values in the CUSTOMERS table, you do
not need to use the WHERE clause as the UPDATE query would be enough as shown in the following code
block.
+----+----------+-----+---------+---------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+---------+---------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Pune | 1000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Pune | 1000.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Pune | 1000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Pune | 1000.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Pune | 1000.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | Pune | 1000.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Pune | 1000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+---------+---------+
The SQL DELETE Query is used to delete the existing records from a table.
You can use the WHERE clause with a DELETE query to delete the selected rows, otherwise all the
records would be deleted.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the DELETE query with the WHERE clause is as follows −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code has a query, which will DELETE a customer, whose ID is 6.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
If you want to DELETE all the records from the CUSTOMERS table, you do not need to use the WHERE
clause and the DELETE query would be as follows −
The SQL LIKE clause is used to compare a value to similar values using wildcard operators. There are two
wildcards used in conjunction with the LIKE operator.
The percent sign represents zero, one or multiple characters. The underscore represents a single number
or character. These symbols can be used in combinations.
Syntax
The basic syntax of % and _ is as follows −
or
or
or
or
You can combine N number of conditions using AND or OR operators. Here, XXXX could be any numeric
or string value.
Example
The following table has a few examples showing the WHERE part having different LIKE clause with '%'
and '_' operators −
Finds any values that start with 2 and are at least 3 characters in length.
Let us take a real example, consider the CUSTOMERS table having the records as shown below.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example, which would display all the records from the CUSTOMERS table, where the
SALARY starts with 200.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The SQL TOP clause is used to fetch a TOP N number or X percent records from a table.
Note − All the databases do not support the TOP clause. For example MySQL supports the LIMIT clause
to fetch limited number of records while Oracle uses the ROWNUM command to fetch a limited number
of records.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the TOP clause with a SELECT statement would be as follows.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following query is an example on the SQL server, which would fetch the top 3 records from the
CUSTOMERS table.
+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+
If you are using an Oracle server, then the following code block has an equivalent example.
+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+
The SQL ORDER BY clause is used to sort the data in ascending or descending order, based on one or
more columns. Some databases sort the query results in an ascending order by default.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the ORDER BY clause is as follows −
SELECT column-list
FROM table_name
[WHERE condition]
[ORDER BY column1, column2, .. columnN] [ASC | DESC];
You can use more than one column in the ORDER BY clause. Make sure whatever column you are using to
sort that column should be in the column-list.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code block has an example, which would sort the result in an ascending order by the NAME
and the SALARY −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code block has an example, which would sort the result in the descending order by NAME.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The SQL GROUP BY clause is used in collaboration with the SELECT statement to arrange identical data
into groups. This GROUP BY clause follows the WHERE clause in a SELECT statement and precedes the
ORDER BY clause.
Syntax
The basic syntax of a GROUP BY clause is shown in the following code block. The GROUP BY clause must
follow the conditions in the WHERE clause and must precede the ORDER BY clause if one is used.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
If you want to know the total amount of the salary on each customer, then the GROUP BY query would be
as follows.
+----------+-------------+
| NAME | SUM(SALARY) |
+----------+-------------+
| Chaitali | 6500.00 |
| Hardik | 8500.00 |
| kaushik | 2000.00 |
| Khilan | 1500.00 |
| Komal | 4500.00 |
| Muffy | 10000.00 |
| Ramesh | 2000.00 |
+----------+-------------+
Now, let us look at a table where the CUSTOMERS table has the following records with duplicate names −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Ramesh | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | kaushik | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Now again, if you want to know the total amount of salary on each customer, then the GROUP BY query
would be as follows −
+---------+-------------+
| NAME | SUM(SALARY) |
+---------+-------------+
| Hardik | 8500.00 |
| kaushik | 8500.00 |
| Komal | 4500.00 |
| Muffy | 10000.00 |
| Ramesh | 3500.00 |
+---------+-------------+
The SQL DISTINCT keyword is used in conjunction with the SELECT statement to eliminate all the
duplicate records and fetching only unique records.
There may be a situation when you have multiple duplicate records in a table. While fetching such records,
it makes more sense to fetch only those unique records instead of fetching duplicate records.
Syntax
The basic syntax of DISTINCT keyword to eliminate the duplicate records is as follows −
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
First, let us see how the following SELECT query returns the duplicate salary records.
This would produce the following result, where the salary 2000 is coming twice which is a duplicate record
from the original table.
+----------+
| SALARY |
+----------+
| 1500.00 |
| 2000.00 |
| 2000.00 |
| 4500.00 |
| 6500.00 |
| 8500.00 |
| 10000.00 |
+----------+
Now, let us use the DISTINCT keyword with the above SELECT query and then see the result.
This would produce the following result where we do not have any duplicate entry.
+----------+
| SALARY |
+----------+
| 1500.00 |
| 2000.00 |
| 4500.00 |
| 6500.00 |
| 8500.00 |
| 10000.00 |
+----------+
The SQL ORDER BY clause is used to sort the data in ascending or descending order, based on one or
more columns. Some databases sort the query results in an ascending order by default.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the ORDER BY clause which would be used to sort the result in an ascending or
descending order is as follows −
SELECT column-list
FROM table_name
[WHERE condition]
[ORDER BY column1, column2, .. columnN] [ASC | DESC];
You can use more than one column in the ORDER BY clause. Make sure that whatever column you are
using to sort, that column should be in the column-list.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example, which would sort the result in an ascending order by NAME and SALARY.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code block has an example, which would sort the result in a descending order by NAME.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
To fetch the rows with their own preferred order, the SELECT query used would be as follows −
This will sort the customers by ADDRESS in your ownoOrder of preference first and in a natural order
for the remaining addresses. Also, the remaining Addresses will be sorted in the reverse alphabetical
order.
Constraints are the rules enforced on the data columns of a table. These are used to limit the type of data
that can go into a table. This ensures the accuracy and reliability of the data in the database.
Constraints could be either on a column level or a table level. The column level constraints are applied
only to one column, whereas the table level constraints are applied to the whole table.
Following are some of the most commonly used constraints available in SQL. These constraints have
already been discussed in SQL - RDBMS Concepts chapter, but it’s worth to revise them at this point.
• NOT NULL Constraint − Ensures that a column cannot have NULL value.
• DEFAULT Constraint − Provides a default value for a column when none is specified.
• FOREIGN Key − Uniquely identifies a row/record in any of the given database table.
• CHECK Constraint − The CHECK constraint ensures that all the values in a column satisfies certain
conditions.
• INDEX − Used to create and retrieve data from the database very quickly.
Constraints can be specified when a table is created with the CREATE TABLE statement or you can use
the ALTER TABLE statement to create constraints even after the table is created.
Dropping Constraints
Any constraint that you have defined can be dropped using the ALTER TABLE command with the DROP
CONSTRAINT option.
For example, to drop the primary key constraint in the EMPLOYEES table, you can use the following
command.
Some implementations may provide shortcuts for dropping certain constraints. For example, to drop the
primary key constraint for a table in Oracle, you can use the following command.
ALTER TABLE EMPLOYEES DROP PRIMARY KEY;
Some implementations allow you to disable constraints. Instead of permanently dropping a constraint
from the database, you may want to temporarily disable the constraint and then enable it later.
Integrity Constraints
Integrity constraints are used to ensure accuracy and consistency of the data in a relational database. Data
integrity is handled in a relational database through the concept of referential integrity.
There are many types of integrity constraints that play a role in Referential Integrity RI . These
constraints include Primary Key, Foreign Key, Unique Constraints and other constraints which are
mentioned above.
The SQL Joins clause is used to combine records from two or more tables in a database. A JOIN is a
means for combining fields from two tables by using values common to each.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
|OID | DATE | CUSTOMER_ID | AMOUNT |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
| 102 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 3000 |
| 100 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 1500 |
| 101 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 | 2 | 1560 |
| 103 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 | 4 | 2060 |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
Now, let us join these two tables in our SELECT statement as shown below.
Here, it is noticeable that the join is performed in the WHERE clause. Several operators can be used to
join tables, such as =, <, >, <>, <=, >=, !=, BETWEEN, LIKE, and NOT; they can all be used to join tables.
However, the most common operator is the equal to symbol.
• LEFT JOIN − returns all rows from the left table, even if there are no matches in the right table.
• RIGHT JOIN − returns all rows from the right table, even if there are no matches in the left table.
• FULL JOIN − returns rows when there is a match in one of the tables.
• SELF JOIN − is used to join a table to itself as if the table were two tables, temporarily renaming at
least one table in the SQL statement.
• CARTESIAN JOIN − returns the Cartesian product of the sets of records from the two or more
joined tables.
The SQL UNION clause/operator is used to combine the results of two or more SELECT statements
without returning any duplicate rows.
Syntax
The basic syntax of a UNION clause is as follows −
UNION
SELECT column1 [, column2 ]
FROM table1 [, table2 ]
[WHERE condition]
Here, the given condition could be any given expression based on your requirement.
Example
Consider the following two tables.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
|OID | DATE | CUSTOMER_ID | AMOUNT |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
| 102 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 3000 |
| 100 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 1500 |
| 101 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 | 2 | 1560 |
| 103 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 | 4 | 2060 |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
Now, let us join these two tables in our SELECT statement as follows −
+------+----------+--------+---------------------+
| ID | NAME | AMOUNT | DATE |
+------+----------+--------+---------------------+
| 1 | Ramesh | NULL | NULL |
| 2 | Khilan | 1560 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 3000 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 1500 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 2060 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 |
| 5 | Hardik | NULL | NULL |
| 6 | Komal | NULL | NULL |
| 7 | Muffy | NULL | NULL |
+------+----------+--------+---------------------+
The same rules that apply to the UNION clause will apply to the UNION ALL operator.
Syntax
The basic syntax of the UNION ALL is as follows.
UNION ALL
Here, the given condition could be any given expression based on your requirement.
Example
Consider the following two tables,
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
|OID | DATE | CUSTOMER_ID | AMOUNT |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
| 102 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 3000 |
| 100 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 1500 |
| 101 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 | 2 | 1560 |
| 103 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 | 4 | 2060 |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
Now, let us join these two tables in our SELECT statement as follows −
+------+----------+--------+---------------------+
| ID | NAME | AMOUNT | DATE |
+------+----------+--------+---------------------+
| 1 | Ramesh | NULL | NULL |
| 2 | Khilan | 1560 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 3000 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 1500 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 2060 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 |
| 5 | Hardik | NULL | NULL |
| 6 | Komal | NULL | NULL |
| 7 | Muffy | NULL | NULL |
| 3 | kaushik | 3000 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 1500 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 1560 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 2060 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 |
+------+----------+--------+---------------------+
There are two other clauses i. e. , operators , which are like the UNION clause.
• SQL INTERSECT Clause − This is used to combine two SELECT statements, but returns rows only
from the first SELECT statement that are identical to a row in the second SELECT statement.
• SQL EXCEPT Clause − This combines two SELECT statements and returns rows from the first
SELECT statement that are not returned by the second SELECT statement.
The SQL NULL is the term used to represent a missing value. A NULL value in a table is a value in a field
that appears to be blank.
A field with a NULL value is a field with no value. It is very important to understand that a NULL value is
different than a zero value or a field that contains spaces.
Syntax
The basic syntax of NULL while creating a table.
Here, NOT NULL signifies that column should always accept an explicit value of the given data type.
There are two columns where we did not use NOT NULL, which means these columns could be NULL.
A field with a NULL value is the one that has been left blank during the record creation.
Example
The NULL value can cause problems when selecting data. However, because when comparing an
unknown value to any other value, the result is always unknown and not included in the results. You must
use the IS NULL or IS NOT NULL operators to check for a NULL value.
Consider the following CUSTOMERS table having the records as shown below.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
You can rename a table or a column temporarily by giving another name known as Alias. The use of table
aliases is to rename a table in a specific SQL statement. The renaming is a temporary change and the
actual table name does not change in the database. The column aliases are used to rename a table's
columns for the purpose of a particular SQL query.
Syntax
The basic syntax of a table alias is as follows.
Example
Consider the following two tables.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
|OID | DATE | CUSTOMER_ID | AMOUNT |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
| 102 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 3000 |
| 100 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 1500 |
| 101 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 | 2 | 1560 |
| 103 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 | 4 | 2060 |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
Now, the following code block shows the usage of a table alias.
SQL> SELECT C.ID, C.NAME, C.AGE, O.AMOUNT
FROM CUSTOMERS AS C, ORDERS AS O
WHERE C.ID = O.CUSTOMER_ID;
+----+----------+-----+--------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | AMOUNT |
+----+----------+-----+--------+
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | 3000 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | 1500 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | 1560 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | 2060 |
+----+----------+-----+--------+
+-------------+---------------+
| CUSTOMER_ID | CUSTOMER_NAME |
+-------------+---------------+
| 1 | Ramesh |
| 2 | Khilan |
| 3 | kaushik |
| 4 | Chaitali |
| 5 | Hardik |
| 6 | Komal |
| 7 | Muffy |
+-------------+---------------+
Indexes are special lookup tables that the database search engine can use to speed up data retrieval.
Simply put, an index is a pointer to data in a table. An index in a database is very similar to an index in the
back of a book.
For example, if you want to reference all pages in a book that discusses a certain topic, you first refer to
the index, which lists all the topics alphabetically and are then referred to one or more specific page
numbers.
An index helps to speed up SELECT queries and WHERE clauses, but it slows down data input, with the
UPDATE and the INSERT statements. Indexes can be created or dropped with no effect on the data.
Creating an index involves the CREATE INDEX statement, which allows you to name the index, to
specify the table and which column or columns to index, and to indicate whether the index is in an
ascending or descending order.
Indexes can also be unique, like the UNIQUE constraint, in that the index prevents duplicate entries in
the column or combination of columns on which there is an index.
The CREATE INDEX Command
The basic syntax of a CREATE INDEX is as follows.
Single-Column Indexes
A single-column index is created based on only one table column. The basic syntax is as follows.
Unique Indexes
Unique indexes are used not only for performance, but also for data integrity. A unique index does not
allow any duplicate values to be inserted into the table. The basic syntax is as follows.
Composite Indexes
A composite index is an index on two or more columns of a table. Its basic syntax is as follows.
Whether to create a single-column index or a composite index, take into consideration the columns that
you may use very frequently in a query's WHERE clause as filter conditions.
Should there be only one column used, a single-column index should be the choice. Should there be two or
more columns that are frequently used in the WHERE clause as filters, the composite index would be the
best choice.
Implicit Indexes
Implicit indexes are indexes that are automatically created by the database server when an object is
created. Indexes are automatically created for primary key constraints and unique constraints.
You can check the INDEX Constraint chapter to see some actual examples on Indexes.
When should indexes be avoided?
Although indexes are intended to enhance a database's performance, there are times when they should be
avoided.
The following guidelines indicate when the use of an index should be reconsidered.
• Indexes should not be used on columns that contain a high number of NULL values.
The SQL ALTER TABLE command is used to add, delete or modify columns in an existing table. You
should also use the ALTER TABLE command to add and drop various constraints on an existing table.
Syntax
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to add a New Column in an existing table is as follows.
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to DROP COLUMN in an existing table is as follows.
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to change the DATA TYPE of a column in a table is as
follows.
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to add a NOT NULL constraint to a column in a table is
as follows.
The basic syntax of ALTER TABLE to ADD UNIQUE CONSTRAINT to a table is as follows.
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to ADD CHECK CONSTRAINT to a table is as follows.
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to ADD PRIMARY KEY constraint to a table is as
follows.
ALTER TABLE table_name
ADD CONSTRAINT MyPrimaryKey PRIMARY KEY (column1, column2...);
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to DROP CONSTRAINT from a table is as follows.
The basic syntax of an ALTER TABLE command to DROP PRIMARY KEY constraint from a table is as
follows.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Now, the CUSTOMERS table is changed and following would be output from the SELECT statement.
+----+---------+-----+-----------+----------+------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY | SEX |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+----------+------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 | NULL |
| 2 | Ramesh | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 | NULL |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 | NULL |
| 4 | kaushik | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 | NULL |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 | NULL |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 | NULL |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 | NULL |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+----------+------+
Following is the example to DROP sex column from the existing table.
Now, the CUSTOMERS table is changed and following would be the output from the SELECT statement.
+----+---------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Ramesh | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | kaushik | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+---------+-----+-----------+----------+
The SQL TRUNCATE TABLE command is used to delete complete data from an existing table.
You can also use DROP TABLE command to delete complete table but it would remove complete table
structure form the database and you would need to re-create this table once again if you wish you store
some data.
Syntax
The basic syntax of a TRUNCATE TABLE command is as follows.
Example
Consider a CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
A view is nothing more than a SQL statement that is stored in the database with an associated name. A
view is actually a composition of a table in the form of a predefined SQL query.
A view can contain all rows of a table or select rows from a table. A view can be created from one or many
tables which depends on the written SQL query to create a view.
Views, which are a type of virtual tables allow users to do the following −
• Structure data in a way that users or classes of users find natural or intuitive.
• Restrict access to the data in such a way that a user can see and sometimes modify exactly what they
need and no more.
• Summarize data from various tables which can be used to generate reports.
Creating Views
Database views are created using the CREATE VIEW statement. Views can be created from a single
table, multiple tables or another view.
To create a view, a user must have the appropriate system privilege according to the specific
implementation.
You can include multiple tables in your SELECT statement in a similar way as you use them in a normal
SQL SELECT query.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example to create a view from the CUSTOMERS table. This view would be used to have
customer name and age from the CUSTOMERS table.
Now, you can query CUSTOMERS_VIEW in a similar way as you query an actual table. Following is an
example for the same.
+----------+-----+
| name | age |
+----------+-----+
| Ramesh | 32 |
| Khilan | 25 |
| kaushik | 23 |
| Chaitali | 25 |
| Hardik | 27 |
| Komal | 22 |
| Muffy | 24 |
+----------+-----+
If they do not satisfy the conditions , the UPDATE or INSERT returns an error.
The following code block has an example of creating same view CUSTOMERS_VIEW with the WITH
CHECK OPTION.
The WITH CHECK OPTION in this case should deny the entry of any NULL values in the view's AGE
column, because the view is defined by data that does not have a NULL value in the AGE column.
Updating a View
A view can be updated under certain conditions which are given below −
• All NOT NULL columns from the base table must be included in the view in order for the INSERT
query to function.
So, if a view satisfies all the above-mentioned rules then you can update that view. The following code
block has an example to update the age of Ramesh.
This would ultimately update the base table CUSTOMERS and the same would reflect in the view itself.
Now, try to query the base table and the SELECT statement would produce the following result.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 35 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Here, we cannot insert rows in the CUSTOMERS_VIEW because we have not included all the NOT NULL
columns in this view, otherwise you can insert rows in a view in a similar way as you insert them in a table.
This would ultimately delete a row from the base table CUSTOMERS and the same would reflect in the
view itself. Now, try to query the base table and the SELECT statement would produce the following
result.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 35 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Dropping Views
Obviously, where you have a view, you need a way to drop the view if it is no longer needed. The syntax is
very simple and is given below −
The HAVING Clause enables you to specify conditions that filter which group results appear in the
results.
The WHERE clause places conditions on the selected columns, whereas the HAVING clause places
conditions on groups created by the GROUP BY clause.
Syntax
The following code block shows the position of the HAVING Clause in a query.
SELECT
FROM
WHERE
GROUP BY
HAVING
ORDER BY
The HAVING clause must follow the GROUP BY clause in a query and must also precede the ORDER BY
clause if used. The following code block has the syntax of the SELECT statement including the HAVING
clause −
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example, which would display a record for a similar age count that would be more than or
equal to 2.
+----+--------+-----+---------+---------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+--------+-----+---------+---------+
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
+----+--------+-----+---------+---------+
A transaction is a unit of work that is performed against a database. Transactions are units or sequences of
work accomplished in a logical order, whether in a manual fashion by a user or automatically by some sort
of a database program.
A transaction is the propagation of one or more changes to the database. For example, if you are creating a
record or updating a record or deleting a record from the table, then you are performing a transaction on
that table. It is important to control these transactions to ensure the data integrity and to handle database
errors.
Practically, you will club many SQL queries into a group and you will execute all of them together as a part
of a transaction.
Properties of Transactions
Transactions have the following four standard properties, usually referred to by the acronym ACID.
• Atomicity − ensures that all operations within the work unit are completed successfully.
Otherwise, the transaction is aborted at the point of failure and all the previous operations are
rolled back to their former state.
• Consistency − ensures that the database properly changes states upon a successfully committed
transaction.
• Isolation − enables transactions to operate independently of and transparent to each other.
• Durability − ensures that the result or effect of a committed transaction persists in case of a
system failure.
Transaction Control
The following commands are used to control transactions.
The COMMIT command is the transactional command used to save changes invoked by a transaction to
the database. The COMMIT command saves all the transactions to the database since the last COMMIT or
ROLLBACK command.
COMMIT;
Example
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example which would delete those records from the table which have age = 25 and then
COMMIT the changes in the database.
SQL> DELETE FROM CUSTOMERS
WHERE AGE = 25;
SQL> COMMIT;
Thus, two rows from the table would be deleted and the SELECT statement would produce the following
result.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
ROLLBACK;
Example
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example, which would delete those records from the table which have the age = 25 and
then ROLLBACK the changes in the database.
Thus, the delete operation would not impact the table and the SELECT statement would produce the
following result.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
SAVEPOINT SAVEPOINT_NAME;
This command serves only in the creation of a SAVEPOINT among all the transactional statements. The
ROLLBACK command is used to undo a group of transactions.
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT_NAME;
Following is an example where you plan to delete the three different records from the CUSTOMERS table.
You want to create a SAVEPOINT before each delete, so that you can ROLLBACK to any SAVEPOINT at
any time to return the appropriate data to its original state.
Example
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Now that the three deletions have taken place, let us assume that you have changed your mind and
decided to ROLLBACK to the SAVEPOINT that you identified as SP2. Because SP2 was created after the
first deletion, the last two deletions are undone −
Notice that only the first deletion took place since you rolled back to SP2.
Once a SAVEPOINT has been released, you can no longer use the ROLLBACK command to undo
transactions performed since the last SAVEPOINT.
We have already discussed about the SQL LIKE operator, which is used to compare a value to similar
values using the wildcard operators.
SQL supports two wildcard operators in conjunction with the LIKE operator which are explained in detail
in the following table.
Sr.No. Wildcard & Description
The underscore _
The percent sign represents zero, one or multiple characters. The underscore represents a single number
or a character. These symbols can be used in combinations.
Syntax
The basic syntax of a '%' and a '_' operator is as follows.
or
or
or
or
You can combine N number of conditions using the AND or the OR operators. Here, XXXX could be any
numeric or string value.
Example
The following table has a number of examples showing the WHERE part having different LIKE clauses
with '%' and '_' operators.
Let us take a real example, consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following code block is an example, which would display all the records from the CUSTOMERS table
where the SALARY starts with 200.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
The following table has a list of all the important Date and Time related functions available through SQL.
There are various other functions supported by your RDBMS. The given list is based on MySQL RDBMS.
ADDDATE
1
Adds dates
ADDTIME
2
Adds time
CONVERT_TZ
3
Converts from one timezone to another
CURDATE
4
Returns the current date
5 CURRENT_DATE , CURRENT_DATE
Synonyms for CURDATE
CURRENT_TIME , CURRENT_TIME
6
Synonyms for CURTIME
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP , CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
7
Synonyms for NOW
CURTIME
8
Returns the current time
DATE_ADD
9
Adds two dates
DATE_FORMAT
10
Formats date as specified
DATE_SUB
11
Subtracts two dates
DATE
12
Extracts the date part of a date or datetime expression
DATEDIFF
13
Subtracts two dates
DAY
14
Synonym for DAYOFMONTH
DAYNAME
15
Returns the name of the weekday
16 DAYOFMONTH
Returns the day of the month 1 − 31
DAYOFWEEK
17
Returns the weekday index of the argument
DAYOFYEAR
18
Returns the day of the year 1 − 366
EXTRACT
19
Extracts part of a date
FROM_DAYS
20
Converts a day number to a date
FROM_UNIXTIME
21
Formats date as a UNIX timestamp
HOUR
22
Extracts the hour
LAST_DAY
23
Returns the last day of the month for the argument
LOCALTIME , LOCALTIME
24
Synonym for NOW
LOCALTIMESTAMP, LOCALTIMESTAMP
25
Synonym for NOW
MAKEDATE
26
Creates a date from the year and day of year
27 MAKETIME
MAKETIME
MICROSECOND
28
Returns the microseconds from argument
MINUTE
29
Returns the minute from the argument
MONTH
30
Return the month from the date passed
MONTHNAME
31
Returns the name of the month
NOW
32
Returns the current date and time
PERIOD_ADD
33
Adds a period to a year-month
PERIOD_DIFF
34
Returns the number of months between periods
QUARTER
35
Returns the quarter from a date argument
SEC_TO_TIME
36
Converts seconds to 'HH:MM:SS' format
SECOND
37
Returns the second 0 − 59
38 STR_TO_DATE
Converts a string to a date
SUBDATE
39
When invoked with three arguments a synonym for DATE_SUB
SUBTIME
40
Subtracts times
SYSDATE
41
Returns the time at which the function executes
TIME_FORMAT
42
Formats as time
TIME_TO_SEC
43
Returns the argument converted to seconds
TIME
44
Extracts the time portion of the expression passed
TIMEDIFF
45
Subtracts time
TIMESTAMP
46 With a single argument this function returns the date or datetime expression. With two
arguments, the sum of the arguments
TIMESTAMPADD
47
Adds an interval to a datetime expression
TIMESTAMPDIFF
48
Subtracts an interval from a datetime expression
49 TO_DAYS
UNIX_TIMESTAMP
50
Returns a UNIX timestamp
UTC_DATE
51
Returns the current UTC date
UTC_TIME
52
Returns the current UTC time
UTC_TIMESTAMP
53
Returns the current UTC date and time
WEEK
54
Returns the week number
WEEKDAY
55
Returns the weekday index
WEEKOFYEAR
56
Returns the calendar week of the date 1 − 53
YEAR
57
Returns the year
YEARWEEK
58
Returns the year and week
ADDDATEdate, INTERVALexprunit , ADDDATEexpr, days
When invoked with the INTERVAL form of the second argument, ADDDATE is a synonym for
DATE_ADD . The related function SUBDATE is a synonym for DATE_SUB . For information on the
INTERVAL unit argument, see the discussion for DATE_ADD .
When invoked with the days form of the second argument, MySQL treats it as an integer number of days
to be added to expr.
ADDTIMEexpr1, expr2
ADDTIME adds expr2 to expr1 and returns the result. The expr1 is a time or datetime expression, while
the expr2 is a time expression.
This converts a datetime value dt from the time zone given by from_tz to the time zone given by to_tz and
returns the resulting value. This function returns NULL if the arguments are invalid.
CURDATE
Returns the current date as a value in 'YYYY-MM-DD' or YYYYMMDD format, depending on whether the
function is used in a string or in a numeric context.
CURTIME
Returns the current time as a value in 'HH:MM:SS' or HHMMSS format, depending on whether the
function is used in a string or in a numeric context. The value is expressed in the current time zone.
DATEexpr
Extracts the date part of the date or datetime expression expr.
DATEDIFFexpr1, expr2
DATEDIFF returns expr1 . expr2 expressed as a value in days from one date to the other. Both expr1 and
expr2 are date or date-and-time expressions. Only the date parts of the values are used in the calculation.
A unit is a keyword indicating the units in which the expression should be interpreted.
The INTERVAL keyword and the unit specifier are not case sensitive.
The following table shows the expected form of the expr argument for each unit value.
MICROSECOND MICROSECONDS
SECOND SECONDS
MINUTE MINUTES
HOUR HOURS
DAY DAYS
WEEK WEEKS
MONTH MONTHS
QUARTER QUARTERS
YEAR YEARS
SECOND_MICROSECOND 'SECONDS.MICROSECONDS'
MINUTE_MICROSECOND 'MINUTES.MICROSECONDS'
MINUTE_SECOND 'MINUTES:SECONDS'
HOUR_MICROSECOND 'HOURS.MICROSECONDS'
HOUR_SECOND 'HOURS:MINUTES:SECONDS'
HOUR_MINUTE 'HOURS:MINUTES'
DAY_MICROSECOND 'DAYS.MICROSECONDS'
YEAR_MONTH 'YEARS-MONTHS'
The values QUARTER and WEEK are available from the MySQL 5.0.0. version.
The following specifiers may be used in the format string. The '%' character is required before the format
specifier characters.
%a
1
Abbreviated weekday name Sun. . Sat
%b
2
Abbreviated month name Jan. . Dec
%c
3
Month, numeric 0..12
%D
4
Day of the month with English suffix 0th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, .
%d
5
Day of the month, numeric 00..31
%e
6
Day of the month, numeric 0..31
%f
7
Microseconds 000000..999999
8
%H
Hour 00..23
%h
9
Hour 01..12
%I
10
Hour 01..12
%i
11
Minutes, numeric 00..59
%j
12
Day of year 001..366
%k
13
Hour 0..23
%l
14
Hour 1..12
%M
15
Month name January. . December
%m
16
Month, numeric 00..12
17
%p
AM or PM
%r
18
Time, 12-hour hh : mm : ssfollowedbyAMorPM
%S
19
Seconds 00..59
%s
20
Seconds 00..59
%T
21
Time, 24-hour hh : mm : ss
%U
22
Week 00..53 , where Sunday is the first day of the week
%u
23
Week 00..53 , where Monday is the first day of the week
%V
24
Week 01..53 , where Sunday is the first day of the week; used with %X
%v
25
Week 01..53 , where Monday is the first day of the week; used with %x
%W
26
Weekday name Sunday. . Saturday
27
%w
%X
28 Year for the week where Sunday is the first day of the week, numeric, four digits; used with
%V
%x
29 Year for the week, where Monday is the first day of the week, numeric, four digits; used with
%v
%Y
30
Year, numeric, four digits
%y
31
Year, numeric twodigits
%%
32
A literal .%. character
%x
33
x, for any.x. not listed above
DATE_SUBdate, INTERVALexprunit
This is similar to the DATE_ADD function.
DAYdate
The DAY is a synonym for the DAYOFMONTH function.
DAYNAMEdate
Returns the name of the weekday for date.
DAYOFMONTHdate
Returns the day of the month for date, in the range 0 to 31.
DAYOFWEEKdate
Returns the weekday index for date 1 = Sunday, 2 = Monday, . , 7 = Saturday . These index values
correspond to the ODBC standard.
DAYOFYEARdate
Returns the day of the year for date, in the range 1 to 366.
mysql> SELECT DAYOFYEAR('1998-02-03');
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| DAYOFYEAR('1998-02-03') |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| 34 |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
EXTRACTunitFROMdate
The EXTRACT function uses the same kinds of unit specifiers as DATE_ADD or DATE_SUB , but extracts
parts from the date rather than performing date arithmetic.
FROM_DAYSN
Given a day number N, returns a DATE value.
Note − Use FROM_DAYS with caution on old dates. It is not intended for use with values that precede
the advent of the Gregorian calendar 1582 .
FROM_UNIXTIMEunix timestamp
If the format is given, the result is formatted according to the format string, which is used in the same way
as is listed in the entry for the DATE_FORMAT function.
mysql> SELECT FROM_UNIXTIME(875996580);
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| FROM_UNIXTIME(875996580) |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| 1997-10-04 22:23:00 |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
HOURtime
Returns the hour for time. The range of the return value is 0 to 23 for time-of-day values. However, the
range of TIME values actually is much larger, so HOUR can return values greater than 23.
LAST_DAYdate
Takes a date or datetime value and returns the corresponding value for the last day of the month. Returns
NULL if the argument is invalid.
MAKEDATEyear, dayofyear
Returns a date, given year and day-of-year values. The dayofyear value must be greater than 0 or the
result will be NULL.
MICROSECONDexpr
Returns the microseconds from the time or datetime expression expr as a number in the range from 0 to
999999.
MINUTEtime
Returns the minute for time, in the range 0 to 59.
MONTHdate
Returns the month for date, in the range 0 to 12.
MONTHNAMEdate
Returns the full name of the month for a date.
NOW
Returns the current date and time as a value in 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS' or YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
format, depending on whether the function is used in a string or numeric context. This value is expressed
in the current time zone.
PERIOD_ADDP, N
Adds N months to a period P intheformatYYMMorYYYYMM . Returns a value in the format YYYYMM. Note
that the period argument P is not a date value.
PERIOD_DIFFP1, P2
Returns the number of months between periods P1 and P2. These periods P1 and P2 should be in the
format YYMM or YYYYMM. Note that the period arguments P1 and P2 are not date values.
QUARTERdate
Returns the quarter of the year for date, in the range 1 to 4.
SECONDtime
Returns the second for time, in the range 0 to 59.
SEC_TO_TIMEseconds
Returns the seconds argument, converted to hours, minutes and seconds, as a value in 'HH:MM:SS' or
HHMMSS format, depending on whether the function is used in a string or numeric context.
STR_TO_DATEstr, format
This is the inverse of the DATE_FORMAT function. It takes a string str and a format string format. The
STR_TO_DATE function returns a DATETIME value if the format string contains both date and time
parts. Else, it returns a DATE or TIME value if the string contains only date or time parts.
SUBTIMEexpr1, expr2
The SUBTIME function returns expr1 . expr2 expressed as a value in the same format as expr1. The expr1
value is a time or a datetime expression, while the expr2 value is a time expression.
SYSDATE
Returns the current date and time as a value in 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS' or YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
format, depending on whether the function is used in a string or in a numeric context.
TIMEexpr
Extracts the time part of the time or datetime expression expr and returns it as a string.
TIMEDIFFexpr1, expr2
The TIMEDIFF function returns expr1 . expr2 expressed as a time value. These expr1 and expr2 values are
time or date-and-time expressions, but both must be of the same type.
This function adds the integer expression interval to the date or datetime expression datetime_expr.
The unit for interval is given by the unit argument, which should be one of the following values −
• FRAC_SECOND
• SECOND, MINUTE
• HOUR, DAY
• WEEK
• MONTH
• QUARTER or
• YEAR
The unit value may be specified using one of the keywords as shown or with a prefix of SQL_TSI_.
Returns the integer difference between the date or datetime expressions datetime_expr1 and
datetime_expr2. The unit for the result is given by the unit argument. The legal values for the unit are the
same as those listed in the description of the TIMESTAMPADD function.
TIME_FORMATtime, format
This function is used like the DATE_FORMAT function, but the format string may contain format
specifiers only for hours, minutes and seconds.
If the time value contains an hour part that is greater than 23, the %H and %k hour format specifiers
produce a value larger than the usual range of 0 to 23. The other hour format specifiers produce the hour
value modulo 12.
TIME_TO_SECtime
Returns the time argument converted to seconds.
TO_DAYSdate
Given a date, returns a day number thenumberofdayssinceyear0 .
UNIX_TIMESTAMP , UNIX_TIMESTAMPdate
If called with no argument, this function returns a Unix timestamp
secondssince ′ 1970 − 01 − 0100 : 00 : 00 ′ UTC as an unsigned integer. If UNIX_TIMESTAMP is called with a
date argument, it returns the value of the argument as seconds since '1970-01-01 00:00:00' UTC. date
may be a DATE string, a DATETIME string, a TIMESTAMP, or a number in the format YYMMDD or
YYYYMMDD.
mysql> SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP();
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| UNIX_TIMESTAMP() |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| 882226357 |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
UTC_DATE, UTC_DATE
Returns the current UTC date as a value in 'YYYY-MM-DD' or YYYYMMDD format, depending on
whether the function is used in a string or numeric context.
UTC_TIME, UTC_TIME
Returns the current UTC time as a value in 'HH:MM:SS' or HHMMSS format, depending on whether the
function is used in a string or numeric context.
UTC_TIMESTAMP, UTC_TIMESTAMP
Returns the current UTC date and time as a value in 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS' or in a
YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format, depending on whether the function is used in a string or in a numeric
context.
WEEKDAYdate
Returns the weekday index for date 0 = Monday, 1 = Tuesday, . 6 = Sunday .
WEEKOFYEARdate
Returns the calendar week of the date as a number in the range from 1 to 53. WEEKOFYEAR is a
compatibility function that is equivalent to WEEKdate, 3 .
mysql> SELECT WEEKOFYEAR('1998-02-20');
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| WEEKOFYEAR('1998-02-20') |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| 8 |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
YEARdate
Returns the year for date, in the range 1000 to 9999, or 0 for the .zero. date.
Note − The week number is different from what the WEEK function would return 0 for optional
arguments 0 or 1, as WEEK then returns the week in the context of the given year.
The temporary tables could be very useful in some cases to keep temporary data. The most important
thing that should be known for temporary tables is that they will be deleted when the current client
session terminates.
Temporary tables are available in MySQL version 3.23 onwards. If you use an older version of MySQL
than 3.23, you can't use temporary tables, but you can use heap tables.
As stated earlier, temporary tables will only last as long as the session is alive. If you run the code in a PHP
script, the temporary table will be destroyed automatically when the script finishes executing. If you are
connected to the MySQL database server through the MySQL client program, then the temporary table
will exist until you close the client or manually destroy the table.
Example
Here is an example showing you the usage of a temporary table.
When you issue a SHOW TABLES command, then your temporary table will not be listed out in the list.
Now, if you log out of the MySQL session and then issue a SELECT command, you will find no data
available in the database. Even your temporary table will not be existing.
There may be a situation when you need an exact copy of a table and the CREATE TABLE ... or the
SELECT... commands does not suit your purposes because the copy must include the same indexes,
default values and so forth.
If you are using MySQL RDBMS, you can handle this situation by adhering to the steps given below −
• Use SHOW CREATE TABLE command to get a CREATE TABLE statement that specifies the source
table's structure, indexes and all.
• Modify the statement to change the table name to that of the clone table and execute the statement.
This way you will have an exact clone table.
• Optionally, if you need the table contents copied as well, issue an INSERT INTO or a SELECT
statement too.
Example
Try out the following example to create a clone table for TUTORIALS_TBL whose structure is as follows
−
Step 3 − After executing step 2, you will clone a table in your database. If you want to copy data from an
old table, then you can do it by using the INSERT INTO... SELECT statement.
SQL> INSERT INTO CLONE_TBL (tutorial_id,
-> tutorial_title,
-> tutorial_author,
-> submission_date)
-> SELECT tutorial_id,tutorial_title,
-> tutorial_author,submission_date,
-> FROM TUTORIALS_TBL;
Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.07 sec)
Records: 3 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
Finally, you will have an exact clone table as you wanted to have.
A Subquery or Inner query or a Nested query is a query within another SQL query and embedded within
the WHERE clause.
A subquery is used to return data that will be used in the main query as a condition to further restrict the
data to be retrieved.
Subqueries can be used with the SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements along with the
operators like =, <, >, >=, <=, IN, BETWEEN, etc.
• A subquery can have only one column in the SELECT clause, unless multiple columns are in the
main query for the subquery to compare its selected columns.
• An ORDER BY command cannot be used in a subquery, although the main query can use an
ORDER BY. The GROUP BY command can be used to perform the same function as the ORDER BY
in a subquery.
• Subqueries that return more than one row can only be used with multiple value operators such as
the IN operator.
• The SELECT list cannot include any references to values that evaluate to a BLOB, ARRAY, CLOB, or
NCLOB.
• The BETWEEN operator cannot be used with a subquery. However, the BETWEEN operator can be
used within the subquery.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 35 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
SQL> SELECT *
FROM CUSTOMERS
WHERE ID IN (SELECT ID
FROM CUSTOMERS
WHERE SALARY > 4500) ;
+----+----------+-----+---------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+---------+----------+
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+---------+----------+
Example
Consider a table CUSTOMERS_BKP with similar structure as CUSTOMERS table. Now to copy the
complete CUSTOMERS table into the CUSTOMERS_BKP table, you can use the following syntax.
UPDATE table
SET column_name = new_value
[ WHERE OPERATOR [ VALUE ]
(SELECT COLUMN_NAME
FROM TABLE_NAME)
[ WHERE) ]
Example
Assuming, we have CUSTOMERS_BKP table available which is backup of CUSTOMERS table. The
following example updates SALARY by 0.25 times in the CUSTOMERS table for all the customers whose
AGE is greater than or equal to 27.
This would impact two rows and finally CUSTOMERS table would have the following records.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 35 | Ahmedabad | 125.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 2125.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
This would impact two rows and finally the CUSTOMERS table would have the following records.
+----+----------+-----+---------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+---------+----------+
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+---------+----------+
A sequence is a set of integers 1, 2, 3, ... that are generated in order on demand. Sequences are frequently
used in databases because many applications require each row in a table to contain a unique value and
sequences provide an easy way to generate them.
Example
Try out the following example. This will create a table and after that it will insert a few rows in this table
where it is not required to give a record ID because its auto-incremented by MySQL.
PERL Example
Use the mysql_insertid attribute to obtain the AUTO_INCREMENT value generated by a query. This
attribute is accessed through either a database handle or a statement handle, depending on how you issue
the query. The following example references it through the database handle.
PHP Example
After issuing a query that generates an AUTO_INCREMENT value, retrieve the value by calling the
mysql_insert_id function.
The following example shows how to renumber the id values in the insect table using this technique.
Alternatively, you can create the table and then set the initial sequence value with ALTER TABLE.
There may be a situation when you have multiple duplicate records in a table. While fetching such records,
it makes more sense to fetch only unique records instead of fetching duplicate records.
The SQL DISTINCT keyword, which we have already discussed is used in conjunction with the SELECT
statement to eliminate all the duplicate records and by fetching only the unique records.
Syntax
The basic syntax of a DISTINCT keyword to eliminate duplicate records is as follows.
Example
Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
First, let us see how the following SELECT query returns duplicate salary records.
This would produce the following result where the salary of 2000 is coming twice which is a duplicate
record from the original table.
+----------+
| SALARY |
+----------+
| 1500.00 |
| 2000.00 |
| 2000.00 |
| 4500.00 |
| 6500.00 |
| 8500.00 |
| 10000.00 |
+----------+
Now, let us use the DISTINCT keyword with the above SELECT query and see the result.
This would produce the following result where we do not have any duplicate entry.
+----------+
| SALARY |
+----------+
| 1500.00 |
| 2000.00 |
| 4500.00 |
| 6500.00 |
| 8500.00 |
| 10000.00 |
+----------+
If you take a user input through a webpage and insert it into a SQL database, there is a chance that you
have left yourself wide open for a security issue known as the SQL Injection. This chapter will teach you
how to help prevent this from happening and help you secure your scripts and SQL statements in your
server side scripts such as a PERL Script.
Injection usually occurs when you ask a user for input, like their name and instead of a name they give you
a SQL statement that you will unknowingly run on your database. Never trust user provided data, process
this data only after validation; as a rule, this is done by Pattern Matching.
In the example below, the name is restricted to the alphanumerical characters plus underscore and to a
length between 8 and 20 characters modifytheserulesasneeded .
// supposed input
$name = "Qadir'; DELETE FROM CUSTOMERS;";
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM CUSTOMSRS WHERE name='{$name}'");
The function call is supposed to retrieve a record from the CUSTOMERS table where the name column
matches the name specified by the user. Under normal circumstances, $name would only contain
alphanumeric characters and perhaps spaces, such as the string ilia. But here, by appending an entirely
new query to $name, the call to the database turns into disaster; the injected DELETE query removes all
records from the CUSTOMERS table.
Fortunately, if you use MySQL, the mysql_query function does not permit query stacking or executing
multiple SQL queries in a single function call. If you try to stack queries, the call fails.
However, other PHP database extensions, such as SQLite and PostgreSQL happily perform stacked
queries, executing all the queries provided in one string and creating a serious security problem.
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
$name = stripslashes($name);
}
$name = mysql_real_escape_string($name);
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS WHERE name='{$name}'");
It takes time to become a Database Expert or an expert Database Administrator. This all comes with lot of
experience in various database designs and good trainings.
But the following list may be helpful for the beginners to have a nice database performance −
• Use 3BNF database design explained in this tutorial in RDBMS Concepts chapter.
• Avoid number-to-character conversions because numbers and characters compare differently and
lead to performance downgrade.
• While using SELECT statement, only fetch whatever information is required and avoid using * in
your SELECT queries because it would load the system unnecessarily.
• Create your indexes carefully on all the tables where you have frequent search operations. Avoid
index on the tables where you have less number of search operations and more number of insert
and update operations.
• A full-table scan occurs when the columns in the WHERE clause do not have an index associated
with them. You can avoid a full-table scan by creating an index on columns that are used as
conditions in the WHERE clause of an SQL statement.
• Be very careful of equality operators with real numbers and date/time values. Both of these can
have small differences that are not obvious to the eye but that make an exact match impossible,
thus preventing your queries from ever returning rows.
• Use pattern matching judiciously. LIKE COL% is a valid WHERE condition, reducing the returned
set to only those records with data starting with the string COL. However, COL%Y does not further
reduce the returned results set since %Y cannot be effectively evaluated. The effort to do the
evaluation is too large to be considered. In this case, the COL% is used, but the %Y is thrown away.
For the same reason, a leading wildcard %COL effectively prevents the entire filter from being used.
• Fine tune your SQL queries examining the structure of the queries andsubqueries , the SQL syntax,
to discover whether you have designed your tables to support fast data manipulation and written
the query in an optimum manner, allowing your DBMS to manipulate the data efficiently.
• For queries that are executed on a regular basis, try to use procedures. A procedure is a potentially
large group of SQL statements. Procedures are compiled by the database engine and then executed.
Unlike an SQL statement, the database engine need not optimize the procedure before it is
executed.
• Avoid using the logical operator OR in a query if possible. OR inevitably slows down nearly any
query against a table of substantial size.
• You can optimize bulk data loads by dropping indexes. Imagine the history table with many
thousands of rows. That history table is also likely to have one or more indexes. When you think of
an index, you normally think of faster table access, but in the case of batch loads, you can benefit by
dropping the indexes .
• When performing batch transactions, perform COMMIT at after a fair number of records creation
in stead of creating them after every record creation.
• Plan to defragment the database on a regular basis, even if doing so means developing a weekly
routine.
• Explain plan − tool identifies the access path that will be taken when the SQL statement is
executed.
• tkprof − measures the performance by time elapsed during each phase of SQL statement
processing.
If you want to simply measure the elapsed time of a query in Oracle, you can use the SQL*Plus command
SET TIMING ON.
Check your RDBMS documentation for more detail on the above-mentioned tools and defragmenting the
database.