Relational Database Management

Systems for Epidemiologists:

SQL Part I
 Outline
SQL Basics
Retrieving Data from a Table
Operators and Functions
 What is SQL?
SQL is the standard programming language to
create, update, delete, and retrieve data stored in
a RDMS.
SQL is defined by rules of syntax (words and
symbols allowed) and semantics (meaning).
Three versions:
ANSI-89 SQL
ANSI-92 SQL
ANSI SQL-99 (newer)
 SQL Syntax
SQL Statement

SELECT fname, lname

FROM casetble
WHERE status='alive'
ORDER BY lname, fname;
 SQL Syntax
Clauses

SELECT fname, lname Columns

FROM casetble Tables

WHERE status='alive' Subset Condition

ORDER BY lname, fname; Displayed Output

 SQL Syntax

SELECT fname, lname

FROM casetble
WHERE status='alive'
ORDER BY lname, fname;

Keywords
 SQL Syntax

SELECT fname, lname

FROM casetble
WHERE status='alive'
ORDER BY lname, fname;

Identifiers
 SQL Syntax

SELECT fname, lname

FROM casetble
WHERE status='alive'
ORDER BY lname, fname;

Terminating
semicolon
 Elements of SQL Style
SQL statements
can be in uppercase or lowercase (case insensitive).
can extend across multiple lines, so long as you do
not split words or quoted strings in two.
To improve readability and maintenance,
Begin each SQL statement on a new line.
Use uppercase for SQL keywords (eg, SELECT,
NULL, CHARACTER).
Indent with a fixed number of spaces (eg, four).
 SELECT
SELECT retrieves rows, columns, and derived
values from one or more tables.
Syntax:
SELECT column(s)
FROM table(s)
[JOIN join(s)]
[WHERE search_condition(s)]
[GROUP BY grouping_column(s)]
[HAVING search_condition(s)]
[ORDER BY sort_column(s)];
SELECT Example

SELECT fname, lname

FROM patients;
SELECT Example

SELECT *
FROM patients;
 AS
The AS statement can be used to create a column
alias (an alternative name/identifier) that you
specify to control how column headings are
displayed in a result.
Syntax:
SELECT column1 AS alias1,
column2 AS alias2,
...
columnN AS aliasN
FROM table;
 AS Example

SELECT fname AS “First Name”,

lname AS “Last Name”
FROM patients;
 DISTINCT
Results of queries oftentimes contain duplicate
values for a particular column.
The DISTINCT keyword eliminates duplicate
rows from a result.
Syntax:
SELECT DISTINCT column(s)
FROM table(s);
 DISTINCT Example

SELECT DISTINCT fname, lname

FROM patients;
 Notes on DISTINCT
If the SELECT DISTINCT clause contains more
than one column, the values of all the columns
specified determined the uniqueness of rows.
All NULLS are considered duplicates of each
other (even though they technically never equal
each other since the values are unknown).
DISTINCT can be used to find typographical
errors in text fields.
 ORDER BY
Rows in a query result are unordered and should
be viewed as arbitrary.
The ORDER BY clause can be used to sort rows
by a specified column (or columns) in
ascending/descending order.
Syntax:
SELECT DISTINCT column(s)
FROM table
ORDER BY sort_column1 [ASC | DESC],
...
sort_columnN [ASC | DESC];
 ORDER BY Example

SELECT fname, lname, city, state

FROM patients
ORDER BY state ASC,
city DESC;
 ORDER BY Example
Resulting queries can be sorted by relative
column positions as in the following example.

SELECT fname, lname, city, state

FROM patients
ORDER BY 4 ASC,
3 DESC;
 ORDER BY Example
Use column aliases in the ORDER BY clause
when aliases are used.
SELECT fname AS “First Name”,
lname AS “Last Name”,
city,
state
FROM patients
ORDER BY state,
“Last Name” DESC,
“First Name” ASC;
 Notes on ORDER BY
The default for sorting is ascending order.
The sorting column(s) do not need to appear in
the resulting query.
If the ORDER BY columns do not identify each
row uniquely, rows with duplicate values will be
listed in arbitrary order.
A DBMS uses a collating sequence (or collation)
to determine the order in which characters are
sorted.
 WHERE
The WHERE clause can be used to filter
unwanted rows in a result (ie, yield a subset of all
rows in the result with a specified condition).
Syntax:
SELECT column(s)
FROM table
WHERE test_column operator value;
 Types of Conditions

Condition SQL Operators

Comparison =, <>, <, <=, >, >=
Pattern Matching LIKE
Range Filtering BETWEEN
List Filtering IN
Null Test IS NULL
 Comparison Operators

Operator Descriptors
= Equal to
<> Not equal to
< Less than
<= Less than or equal to
> Greater than
>= Greater than or equal to
 WHERE Example
SELECT caseid, fname, lname
FROM patients
WHERE lname = 'Johnson';
 WHERE Example
SELECT caseid, fname, lname
FROM patients
WHERE lname <> 'Johnson';
 WHERE Example
SELECT caseid, fname, lname
FROM patients
WHERE datevar >= '2001-01-10';
 WHERE Example
SELECT caseid,
fname,
lname,
MONTH(datevar) AS “Month”,
DAY(datevar) AS “Day”
FROM patients
WHERE “Day” >= “Month”;
 Notes on WHERE
Occasionally, you may need to specify multiple
conditions in a single WHERE clause.
You can use the AND, OR or NOT operators to
combine two or more conditions into a compound
condition.
AND, OR, and NOT operators are known as Boolean
operators; they are designed to work with “truth”
values: true, false, and unknown.
 AND Example
SELECT caseid,
fname,
lname,
MONTH(datevar) AS “Month”
FROM patients
WHERE “Month”=12 AND lname='Johnson';
Truth Table for Two Conditions

AND TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN

TRUE TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN
FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
UNKNOWN UNKNOWN FALSE UNKNOWN
 OR Example
SELECT caseid,
fname,
lname,
MONTH(datevar) AS “Month”
FROM patients
WHERE “Month”=10
OR “Month”=11
OR “Month”=12;
Truth Table for Two Conditions

OR TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN

TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
FALSE TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN
UNKNOWN TRUE UNKNOWN UNKNOWN
 NOT Example
SELECT caseid,
fname,
lname,
MONTH(datevar) AS “Month”
FROM patients
WHERE NOT (“Month”=10);
 NOT Example
SELECT caseid,
fname,
lname,
MONTH(datevar) AS “Month”
FROM patients
WHERE NOT (“Month”=10 OR “Month”=11
OR “Month”=12);
NOT Truth Table

Condition NOT Condition

TRUE FALSE
FALSE TRUE
UNKNOWN UNKNOWN
 Equivalent Conditions

This condition Is equivalent to:

NOT (p AND q) (NOT p) AND (NOT q)
NOT (p OR q) (NOT p) OR (NOT q)
NOT (NOT p) p
 Order of Evaluation
When you use multiple logical operators in a compound
condition, the order of evaluation is:
(1) NOT
(2) AND
(3) OR.
According to these rules, the following condition
x AND NOT y OR z
is equivalent to
(x AND (NOT y)) OR z.
Use parentheses to make the evaluation order more clear
(whatever is in the parenthesis gets evaluated first)!
 LIKE
You can use the LIKE operator to retrieve partial
information for a character string (not numbers or
date/times) rather than an exact value.
LIKE uses a pattern that values are matched
against.
Pattern: quoted string that contains the literal
characters to match and any combination of
wildcards.
Wildcards: special characters used to match parts of a
value.
You can negate a LIKE condition with NOT
LIKE.
 Wildcard Operators

Operator Matches
% Any string of zero or
more characters
_ Any one character
 LIKE Example
Syntax:
SELECT columns
FROM table
WHERE test_column [NOT] LIKE 'pattern';
Example:
SELECT fname, lname
FROM patients
WHERE lname LIKE 'John%';
 BETWEEN
Use the BETWEEN clause to determine whether
a given value falls within a specified range.
BETWEEN works with character strings,
numbers, and date/times.
The range contains a low and high value,
separated by AND (inclusive).
You can negate a BETWEEN condition with
NOT BETWEEN.
 BETWEEN Example
Syntax:
SELECT columns
FROM table
WHERE test_column BETWEEN
low_value AND high value;
Example:
SELECT fname, lname
FROM patients
WHERE zip BETWEEN 94510 AND 94515;
 Equivalent Statements
SELECT fname, lname
FROM patients
WHERE zip BETWEEN 94510 AND 94515;
SELECT fname, lname
FROM patients
WHERE (zip >= 94510) AND (zip<=94515);
 List Filtering with IN
The IN clause can be used to display records with
any value in a specified list for a particular
column.
Syntax:
SELECT columns
FROM table
WHERE test_column [NOT] IN
(value1, value2, ...);
 IN Example
Example:
SELECT fname, lname, state
FROM patients
WHERE state IN ('CA', 'NY');
 IS NULL
Recall: NULLs represent missing or unknown
values.
IS NULL can be used to find records with NULL
values
Syntax:
SELECT columns
FROM table
WHERE test_column IS [NOT] NULL;
 IS NULL Example
SELECT caseid,
fname,
lname
FROM patients
WHERE occupation IS NULL;
Additional Operators & Functions
Arithmetic Operations (+. -, *, /)
Concatenation (||)
Extracting Text (SUBSTRING())
Changing Case (UPPER() and LOWER())
Trimming Characters (TRIM())
Length of a String (CHARACTER_LENGTH() or
LEN())
Position of a Substring (POSITION())
 Next Time
Summarizing and Grouping Data
Aggregate functions (MIN, MAX, SUM, AVG,
COUNT)
Grouping rows with GROUP BY
Filtering groups with HAVING
Joins
Cross, natural, inner, left outer, right outer, full outer,
self-join