What Is SQL?: Lastname Firstname Address City
What Is SQL?: Lastname Firstname Address City
What is SQL?
• SQL stands for Structured Query Language
• SQL allows you to access a database
• SQL is an ANSI standard computer language
• SQL can execute queries against a database
• SQL can retrieve data from a database
• SQL can insert new records in a database
• SQL can delete records from a database
• SQL can update records in a database
The table above contains three records (one for each person) and four columns (LastName, FirstName,
Address, and City).
These query and update commands together form the Data Manipulation Language (DML) part of SQL:
Syntax
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
Note: SQL statements are not case sensitive. SELECT is the same as select.
LastName FirstName
Hansen Ola
Svendson Tove
Pettersen Kari
Result
The SELECT statement returns information from table columns. But what if we only want to select distinct
elements?
With SQL, all we need to do is to add a DISTINCT keyword to the SELECT statement:
Syntax
SELECT DISTINCT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
"Orders" table
Company OrderNumber
Sega 3412
W3Schools 2312
Trio 4678
W3Schools 6798
Result
Company
Sega
W3Schools
Trio
W3Schools
To select only DIFFERENT values from the column named "Company" we use a SELECT DISTINCT
statement like this:
Result:
Company
Sega
W3Schools
Trio
Syntax
SELECT column FROM table
WHERE column operator value
Operator Description
= Equal
<> Not equal
> Greater than
< Less than
>= Greater than or equal
<= Less than or equal
BETWEEN Between an inclusive range
LIKE Search for a pattern
IN If you know the exact value you want to return for
at least one of the columns
"Persons" table
Result
Using Quotes
Note that we have used single quotes around the conditional values in the examples.
SQL uses single quotes around text values (most database systems will also accept double quotes). Numeric
values should not be enclosed in quotes.
This is correct:
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE FirstName='Tove'
This is wrong:
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE FirstName=Tove
This is correct:
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE Year>1965
This is wrong:
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE Year>'1965'
Syntax
SELECT column FROM table
A "%" sign can be used to define wildcards (missing letters in the pattern) both before and after the pattern.
Using LIKE
The following SQL statement will return persons with first names that start with an 'O':
The following SQL statement will return persons with first names that end with an 'a':
The following SQL statement will return persons with first names that contain the pattern 'la':
Syntax
INSERT INTO table_name
VALUES (value1, value2,....)
You can also specify the columns for which you want to insert data:
Person:
Result:
UPDATE Person
SET Address = 'Stien 12', City = 'Stavanger'
WHERE LastName = 'Rasmussen'
Result:
Syntax
DELETE FROM table_name
WHERE column_name = some_value
Person:
Delete a Row
"Nina Rasmussen" is going to be deleted:
Result
Orders:
Company OrderNumber
Sega 3412
ABC Shop 5678
W3Schools 6798
W3Schools 2312
Example
To display the company names in alphabetical order:
Result:
Company OrderNumber
ABC Shop 5678
Sega 3412
W3Schools 6798
W3Schools 2312
Example
To display the company names in alphabetical order AND the OrderNumber in numerical order:
Result:
Example
To display the company names in reverse alphabetical order:
Result:
Company OrderNumber
W3Schools 6798
W3Schools 2312
Sega 3412
ABC Shop 5678
Example
To display the company names in reverse alphabetical order AND the OrderNumber in numerical order:
Result:
Company OrderNumber
W3Schools 2312
W3Schools 6798
Sega 3412
ABC Shop 5678
Notice that there are two equal company names (W3Schools) in the result above. The only time you will see
the second column in ASC order would be when there are duplicated values in the first sort column, or a
handful of nulls.
AND & OR
AND and OR join two or more conditions in a WHERE clause.
The AND operator displays a row if ALL conditions listed are true. The OR operator displays a row if ANY
of the conditions listed are true.
Example
Use AND to display each person with the first name equal to "Tove", and the last name equal to
"Svendson":
Result:
Example
Use OR to display each person with the first name equal to "Tove", or the last name equal to "Svendson":
Result:
Example
You can also combine AND and OR (use parentheses to form complex expressions):
Result:
SQL IN
IN
The IN operator may be used if you know the exact value you want to return for at least one of the columns.
Example 1
Result:
SQL BETWEEN
Example 1
To display the persons alphabetically between (and including) "Hansen" and exclusive "Pettersen", use the
following SQL:
Result:
IMPORTANT! The BETWEEN...AND operator is treated differently in different databases. With some
databases a person with the LastName of "Hansen" or "Pettersen" will not be listed (BETWEEN..AND only
selects fields that are between and excluding the test values). With some databases a person with the last
name of "Hansen" or "Pettersen" will be listed (BETWEEN..AND selects fields that are between and
including the test values). With other databases a person with the last name of "Hansen" will be listed, but
"Pettersen" will not be listed (BETWEEN..AND selects fields between the test values, including the first
test value and excluding the last test value). Therefore: Check how your database treats the
BETWEEN....AND operator!
Example 2
To display the persons outside the range used in the previous example, use the NOT operator:
Result:
SQL Alias
With SQL, aliases can be used for column names and table names.
Family Name
Hansen Ola
Svendson Tove
Pettersen Kari
Table Employees:
LastName FirstName
Hansen Ola
Svendson Tove
Pettersen Kari
SQL JOIN
Tables in a database can be related to each other with keys. A primary key is a column with a unique value
for each row. Each primary key value must be unique within the table. The purpose is to bind data together,
across tables, without repeating all of the data in every table.
In the "Employees" table below, the "Employee_ID" column is the primary key, meaning that no two rows
can have the same Employee_ID. The Employee_ID distinguishes two persons even if they have the same
name.
Employees:
Employee_ID Name
01 Hansen, Ola
02 Svendson, Tove
03 Svendson, Stephen
04 Pettersen, Kari
Orders:
Example
Result
Name Product
Hansen, Ola Printer
Svendson, Stephen Table
Svendson, Stephen Chair
Example
SELECT Employees.Name
FROM Employees, Orders
WHERE Employees.Employee_ID=Orders.Employee_ID
AND Orders.Product='Printer'
Result
Name
Hansen, Ola
Using Joins
Syntax
The INNER JOIN returns all rows from both tables where there is a match. If there are rows in Employees
that do not have matches in Orders, those rows will not be listed.
Result
Name Product
Hansen, Ola Printer
Svendson, Stephen Table
Svendson, Stephen Chair
Syntax
The LEFT JOIN returns all the rows from the first table (Employees), even if there are no matches in the
second table (Orders). If there are rows in Employees that do not have matches in Orders, those rows also
will be listed.
Name Product
Hansen, Ola Printer
Svendson, Tove
Svendson, Stephen Table
Svendson, Stephen Chair
Pettersen, Kari
Syntax
The RIGHT JOIN returns all the rows from the second table (Orders), even if there are no matches in the
first table (Employees). If there had been any rows in Orders that did not have matches in Employees, those
rows also would have been listed.
Result
Name Product
Hansen, Ola Printer
Svendson, Stephen Table
Svendson, Stephen Chair
Example
SELECT Employees.Name
FROM Employees
INNER JOIN Orders
ON Employees.Employee_ID=Orders.Employee_ID
WHERE Orders.Product = 'Printer'
Name
Hansen, Ola
UNION
The UNION command is used to select related information from two tables, much like the JOIN command.
However, when using the UNION command all selected columns need to be of the same data type.
SQL Statement 1
UNION
SQL Statement 2
Employees_Norway:
E_ID E_Name
01 Hansen, Ola
02 Svendson, Tove
03 Svendson, Stephen
04 Pettersen, Kari
Employees_USA:
E_ID E_Name
01 Turner, Sally
02 Kent, Clark
03 Svendson, Stephen
04 Scott, Stephen
Result
E_Name
Hansen, Ola
Svendson, Tove
Svendson, Stephen
Pettersen, Kari
Turner, Sally
Kent, Clark
Scott, Stephen
Note: This command cannot be used to list all employees in Norway and USA. In the example above we
have two employees with equal names, and only one of them is listed. The UNION command only selects
distinct values.
UNION ALL
The UNION ALL command is equal to the UNION command, except that UNION ALL selects all values.
SQL Statement 1
UNION ALL
SQL Statement 2
E_Name
Hansen, Ola
Svendson, Tove
Svendson, Stephen
Pettersen, Kari
Turner, Sally
Kent, Clark
Svendson, Stephen
Scott, Stephen
Create a Database
To create a database:
Create a Table
To create a table in a database:
Example
This example demonstrates how you can create a table named "Person", with four columns. The column
names will be "LastName", "FirstName", "Address", and "Age":
This example demonstrates how you can specify a maximum length for some columns:
The data type specifies what type of data the column can hold. The table below contains the most common
data types in SQL:
Create Index
Indices are created in an existing table to locate rows more quickly and efficiently. It is possible to create an
index on one or more columns of a table, and each index is given a name. The users cannot see the indexes,
they are just used to speed up queries.
Note: Updating a table containing indexes takes more time than updating a table without, this is because the
indexes also need an update. So, it is a good idea to create indexes only on columns that are often used for a
search.
A Unique Index
Creates a unique index on a table. A unique index means that two rows cannot have the same index value.
A Simple Index
Creates a simple index on a table. When the UNIQUE keyword is omitted, duplicate values are allowed.
Example
This example creates a simple index, named "PersonIndex", on the LastName field of the Person table:
If you want to index the values in a column in descending order, you can add the reserved word DESC after
the column name:
If you want to index more than one column you can list the column names within the parentheses, separated
by commas:
Drop Index
You can delete an existing index in a table with the DROP INDEX statement.
To delete a database:
Truncate a Table
What if we only want to get rid of the data inside a table, and not the table itself? Use the TRUNCATE
TABLE command (deletes only the data inside the table):
ALTER TABLE
The ALTER TABLE statement is used to add or drop columns in an existing table.
Note: Some database systems don't allow the dropping of a column in a database table (DROP COLUMN
column_name).
Example
To add a column named "City" in the "Person" table:
Result:
Example
To drop the "Address" column in the "Person" table:
Result:
SQL Functions
SQL has a lot of built-in functions for counting and calculations.
Function Syntax
The syntax for built-in SQL functions is:
• Aggregate Functions
• Scalar functions
Aggregate functions
Aggregate functions operate against a collection of values, but return a single value.
Note: If used among many other expressions in the item list of a SELECT statement, the SELECT must
have a GROUP BY clause!!
Scalar functions
Scalar functions operate against a single value, and return a single value based on the input value.
GROUP BY...
GROUP BY... was added to SQL because aggregate functions (like SUM) return the aggregate of all
column values every time they are called, and without the GROUP BY function it was impossible to find
the sum for each individual group of column values.
GROUP BY Example
This "Sales" Table:
Company Amount
W3Schools 5500
IBM 4500
W3Schools 7100
Company SUM(Amount)
W3Schools 17100
IBM 17100
W3Schools 17100
The above code is invalid because the column returned is not part of an aggregate. A GROUP BY clause
will solve this problem:
Company SUM(Amount)
W3Schools 12600
IBM 4500
HAVING...
HAVING... was added to SQL because the WHERE keyword could not be used against aggregate functions
(like SUM), and without HAVING... it would be impossible to test for result conditions.
Company Amount
W3Schools 5500
IBM 4500
W3Schools 7100
This SQL:
Company SUM(Amount)
W3Schools 12600
If you only want to copy a few fields, you can do so by listing them after the SELECT statement:
You can also add a WHERE clause. The following example creates a "Persons_backup" table with two
columns (FirstName and LastName) by extracting the persons who lives in "Sandnes" from the "Persons"
table:
Selecting data from more than one table is also possible. The following example creates a new table
"Empl_Ord_backup" that contains data from the two tables Employees and Orders:
SELECT Employees.Name,Orders.Product
INTO Empl_Ord_backup
FROM Employees
INNER JOIN Orders
ON Employees.Employee_ID=Orders.Employee_ID
A view contains rows and columns, just like a real table. The fields in a view are fields from one or more
real tables in the database. You can add SQL functions, WHERE, and JOIN statements to a view and
present the data as if the data were coming from a single table.
Note: The database design and structure will NOT be affected by the functions, where, or join statements in
a view.
Syntax
CREATE VIEW view_name AS
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
WHERE condition
Note: The database does not store the view data! The database engine recreates the data, using the view's
SELECT statement, every time a user queries a view.
Using Views
A view could be used from inside a query, a stored procedure, or from inside another view. By adding
functions, joins, etc., to a view, it allows you to present exactly the data you want to the user.
The sample database Northwind has some views installed by default. The view "Current Product List" lists
all active products (products that are not discontinued) from the Products table. The view is created with the
following SQL:
Another view from the Northwind sample database selects every product in the Products table that has a unit
price that is higher than the average unit price:
Another example view from the Northwind database calculates the total sale for each category in 1997. Note
that this view selects its data from another view called "Product Sales for 1997":
We can also add a condition to the query. Now we want to see the total sale only for the category
"Beverages":
The DBMS program enables you to extract, modify, or store information in a database.
Different DBMS programs provides different functions for querying data, reporting data, and modifying
data.
RDBMS was invented by IBM in the early 1970's. RDBMS is the basis for SQL, and for all modern
database systems like Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, Sybase, MySQL, and Microsoft Access.