SQL: Queries, Programming,

Triggers
Chapter 5

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 1

 R1
Example Instances

 We will use these S1

instances of the
Sailors and
Reserves relations
in our examples.
 If the key for the
Reserves relation S2
contained only the
attributes sid and
bid, how would the
semantics differ?

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 2

 SELECT [DISTINCT] target-list
Basic SQL Query FROM relation-list
WHERE qualification

 relation-list A list of relation names (possibly with a

range-variable after each name).
 target-list A list of attributes of relations in relation-list
 qualification Comparisons (Attr op const or Attr1 op
Attr2, where op is one of )
combined using AND, OR and NOT.
 DISTINCT is an optional keyword indicating that the

answer should not contain duplicates. Default is that

duplicates are not eliminated!
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 3
 Conceptual Evaluation Strategy
 Semantics of an SQL query defined in terms of the
following conceptual evaluation strategy:
 Compute the cross-product of relation-list.
 Discard resulting tuples if they fail qualifications.
 Delete attributes that are not in target-list.
 If DISTINCT is specified, eliminate duplicate rows.
 This strategy is probably the least efficient way to
compute a query! An optimizer will find more
efficient strategies to compute the same answers.

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 4

 Example of Conceptual Evaluation
SELECT S.sname
FROM Sailors S, Reserves R
WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=103

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 5

 A Note on Range Variables

 Really needed only if the same relation

appears twice in the FROM clause. The
previous query can also be written as:
SELECT S.sname
FROM Sailors S, Reserves R It is good style,
WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND bid=103 however, to use
range variables
OR SELECT sname always!
FROM Sailors, Reserves
WHERE Sailors.sid=Reserves.sid
AND bid=103
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 6
 Find sailors who’ve reserved at least one boat

SELECT S.sid
FROM Sailors S, Reserves R
WHERE S.sid=R.sid

 Would adding DISTINCT to this query make a

difference?
 What is the effect of replacing S.sid by S.sname in
the SELECT clause? Would adding DISTINCT to
this variant of the query make a difference?

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 7

 Expressions and Strings
SELECT S.age, age1=S.age-5, 2*S.age AS age2
FROM Sailors S
WHERE S.sname LIKE ‘B_%B’

 Illustrates use of arithmetic expressions and string

pattern matching: Find triples (of ages of sailors and
two fields defined by expressions) for sailors whose names
begin and end with B and contain at least three characters.
 AS and = are two ways to name fields in result.
 LIKE is used for string matching. `_’ stands for any
one character and `%’ stands for 0 or more arbitrary
characters.
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 8
 Find sid’s of sailors who’ve reserved a red or a green boat

 UNION: Can be used to SELECT S.sid

compute the union of any FROM Sailors S, Boats B, Reserves R
WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=B.bid
two union-compatible sets of
AND (B.color=‘red’ OR B.color=‘green’)
tuples (which are
themselves the result of
SQL queries).
SELECT S.sid
 If we replace OR by AND in FROM Sailors S, Boats B, Reserves R
the first version, what do WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=B.bid
we get? AND B.color=‘red’
UNION
 Also available: EXCEPT SELECT S.sid
(What do we get if we FROM Sailors S, Boats B, Reserves R
replace UNION by EXCEPT?) WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=B.bid
AND B.color=‘green’
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 9
 Find sid’s of sailors who’ve reserved a red and a green boat
SELECT S.sid
FROM Sailors S, Boats B1, Reserves R1,
 INTERSECT: Can be used to Boats B2, Reserves R2
compute the intersection WHERE S.sid=R1.sid AND R1.bid=B1.bid
AND S.sid=R2.sid AND R2.bid=B2.bid
of any two union-
AND (B1.color=‘red’ AND B2.color=‘green’)
compatible sets of tuples.
 Included in the SQL/92 SELECT S.sid Key field!
standard, but some FROM Sailors S, Boats B, Reserves R
WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=B.bid
systems don’t support it.
AND B.color=‘red’
 Contrast symmetry of the INTERSECT
UNION and INTERSECT SELECT S.sid
FROM Sailors S, Boats B, Reserves R
queries with how much
WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=B.bid
the other versions differ. AND B.color=‘green’

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 10

 Nested Queries
Find names of sailors who’ve reserved boat #103:
SELECT S.sname
FROM Sailors S
WHERE S.sid IN (SELECT R.sid
FROM Reserves R
WHERE R.bid=103)
 A very powerful feature of SQL: a WHERE clause can
itself contain an SQL query! (Actually, so can FROM
and HAVING clauses.)
 To find sailors who’ve not reserved #103, use NOT IN.
 To understand semantics of nested queries, think of a
nested loops evaluation: For each Sailors tuple, check the
qualification by computing the subquery.
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 11
 Nested Queries with Correlation
Find names of sailors who’ve reserved boat #103:
SELECT S.sname
FROM Sailors S
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM Reserves R
WHERE R.bid=103 AND S.sid=R.sid)

 EXISTS is another set comparison operator, like IN.

 If UNIQUE is used, and * is replaced by R.bid, finds
sailors with at most one reservation for boat #103.
(UNIQUE checks for duplicate tuples; * denotes all
attributes. Why do we have to replace * by R.bid?)
 Illustrates why, in general, subquery must be re-
computed for each Sailors tuple.
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 12
 More on Set-Comparison Operators
 We’ve already seen IN, EXISTS and UNIQUE. Can also
use NOT IN, NOT EXISTS and NOT UNIQUE.
 Also available: op ANY, op ALL, op IN
 Find sailors whose rating is greater than that of some
sailor called Horatio:
SELECT *
FROM Sailors S
WHERE S.rating > ANY (SELECT S2.rating
FROM Sailors S2
WHERE S2.sname=‘Horatio’)

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 13

 Rewriting INTERSECT Queries Using IN
Find sid’s of sailors who’ve reserved both a red and a green boat:
SELECT S.sid
FROM Sailors S, Boats B, Reserves R
WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=B.bid AND B.color=‘red’
AND S.sid IN (SELECT S2.sid
FROM Sailors S2, Boats B2, Reserves R2
WHERE S2.sid=R2.sid AND R2.bid=B2.bid
AND B2.color=‘green’)

 Similarly, EXCEPT queries re-written using NOT IN.

 To find names (not sid’s) of Sailors who’ve reserved
both red and green boats, just replace S.sid by S.sname
in SELECT clause. (What about INTERSECT query?)
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 14
 (1) SELECT S.sname
FROM Sailors S
Division in SQL WHERE NOT EXISTS
((SELECT B.bid
FROM Boats B)
Find sailors who’ve reserved all boats. EXCEPT
(SELECT R.bid
 Let’s do it the hard way, FROM Reserves R
WHERE R.sid=S.sid))
without EXCEPT:
(2) SELECT S.sname
FROM Sailors S
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT B.bid
FROM Boats B
Sailors S such that ... WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT R.bid
FROM Reserves R
there is no boat B without ... WHERE R.bid=B.bid
AND R.sid=S.sid))
a Reserves tuple showing S reserved B
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 15
 COUNT (*)
COUNT ( [DISTINCT] A)
Aggregate Operators SUM ( [DISTINCT] A)
AVG ( [DISTINCT] A)
 Significant extension of MAX (A)
MIN (A)
relational algebra.
single column
SELECT COUNT (*)
SELECT S.sname
FROM Sailors S
FROM Sailors S
SELECT AVG (S.age) WHERE S.rating= (SELECT MAX(S2.rating)
FROM Sailors S FROM Sailors S2)
WHERE S.rating=10

SELECT COUNT (DISTINCT S.rating) SELECT AVG ( DISTINCT S.age)

FROM Sailors S FROM Sailors S
WHERE S.sname=‘Bob’ WHERE S.rating=10
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 16
 Find name and age of the oldest sailor(s)
SELECT S.sname, MAX (S.age)
 The first query is illegal! FROM Sailors S
(We’ll look into the
SELECT S.sname, S.age
reason a bit later, when
FROM Sailors S
we discuss GROUP BY.) WHERE S.age =
 The third query is (SELECT MAX (S2.age)
equivalent to the second FROM Sailors S2)

query, and is allowed in SELECT S.sname, S.age

the SQL/92 standard, FROM Sailors S
but is not supported in WHERE (SELECT MAX (S2.age)
some systems. FROM Sailors S2)
= S.age
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 17
 GROUP BY and HAVING
 So far, we’ve applied aggregate operators to all
(qualifying) tuples. Sometimes, we want to apply
them to each of several groups of tuples.
 Consider: Find the age of the youngest sailor for each
rating level.
 In general, we don’t know how many rating levels
exist, and what the rating values for these levels are!
 Suppose we know that rating values go from 1 to 10;
we can write 10 queries that look like this (!):
SELECT MIN (S.age)
For i = 1, 2, ... , 10: FROM Sailors S
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and WHERE
J. Gehrke S.rating = i 18
 Queries With GROUP BY and HAVING
SELECT [DISTINCT] target-list
FROM relation-list
WHERE qualification
GROUP BY grouping-list
HAVING group-qualification

 The target-list contains (i) attribute names (ii) terms

with aggregate operations (e.g., MIN (S.age)).
 The attribute list (i) must be a subset of grouping-list.
Intuitively, each answer tuple corresponds to a group, and
these attributes must have a single value per group. (A
group is a set of tuples that have the same value for all
attributes in grouping-list.)
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 19
 Conceptual Evaluation
 The cross-product of relation-list is computed, tuples
that fail qualification are discarded, `unnecessary’ fields
are deleted, and the remaining tuples are partitioned
into groups by the value of attributes in grouping-list.
 The group-qualification is then applied to eliminate
some groups. Expressions in group-qualification must
have a single value per group!
 In effect, an attribute in group-qualification that is not an
argument of an aggregate op also appears in grouping-list.
(SQL does not exploit primary key semantics here!)
 One answer tuple is generated per qualifying group.
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 20
 Find the age of the youngest sailor with age 18,
for each rating with at least 2 such sailors
SELECT S.rating, MIN (S.age)
FROM Sailors S
WHERE S.age >= 18
GROUP BY S.rating
HAVING COUNT (*) > 1

 Only S.rating and S.age are

mentioned in the SELECT,
GROUP BY or HAVING clauses;
other attributes `unnecessary’.
 2nd column of result is
unnamed. (Use AS to name it.)
Answer relation
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 21
 For each red boat, find the number of
reservations for this boat
SELECT B.bid, COUNT (*) AS scount
FROM Sailors S, Boats B, Reserves R
WHERE S.sid=R.sid AND R.bid=B.bid AND B.color=‘red’
GROUP BY B.bid

 Grouping over a join of three relations.

 What do we get if we remove B.color=‘red’
from the WHERE clause and add a HAVING
clause with this condition?
 What if we drop Sailors and the condition
involving S.sid?
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 22
 Find the age of the youngest sailor with age > 18,
for each rating with at least 2 sailors (of any age)
SELECT S.rating, MIN (S.age)
FROM Sailors S
WHERE S.age > 18
GROUP BY S.rating
HAVING 1 < (SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM Sailors S2
WHERE S.rating=S2.rating)
 Shows HAVING clause can also contain a subquery.
 Compare this with the query where we considered
only ratings with 2 sailors over 18!
 What if HAVING clause is replaced by:
 HAVING COUNT(*) >1
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 23
 Find those ratings for which the average
age is the minimum over all ratings
 Aggregate operations cannot be nested! WRONG:
SELECT S.rating
FROM Sailors S
WHERE S.age = (SELECT MIN (AVG (S2.age)) FROM Sailors S2)
 Correct solution (in SQL/92):
SELECT Temp.rating, Temp.avgage
FROM (SELECT S.rating, AVG (S.age) AS avgage
FROM Sailors S
GROUP BY S.rating) AS Temp
WHERE Temp.avgage = (SELECT MIN (Temp.avgage)
FROM Temp)
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 24
 Null Values
 Field values in a tuple are sometimes unknown (e.g., a
rating has not been assigned) or inapplicable (e.g., no
spouse’s name).
 SQL provides a special value null for such situations.
 The presence of null complicates many issues. E.g.:
 Special operators needed to check if value is/is not null.
 Is rating>8 true or false when rating is equal to null? What
about AND, OR and NOT connectives?
 We need a 3-valued logic (true, false and unknown).
 Meaning of constructs must be defined carefully. (e.g.,
WHERE clause eliminates rows that don’t evaluate to true.)

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 25

 Integrity Constraints (Review)
 An IC describes conditions that every legal instance
of a relation must satisfy.
 Inserts/deletes/updates that violate IC’s are disallowed.
 Can be used to ensure application semantics (e.g., sid is a
key), or prevent inconsistencies (e.g., sname has to be a
string, age must be < 200)
 Types of IC’s: Domain constraints, primary key
constraints, foreign key constraints, general
constraints.
 Domain constraints: Field values must be of right type.
Always enforced.
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 26
 CREATE TABLE Sailors
( sid INTEGER,
General Constraints sname CHAR(10),
rating INTEGER,
age REAL,
 Useful when PRIMARY KEY (sid),
more general CHECK ( rating >= 1
ICs than keys AND rating <= 10 )
CREATE TABLE Reserves
are involved.
( sname CHAR(10),
 Can use queries bid INTEGER,
to express day DATE,
constraint. PRIMARY KEY (bid,day),
 Constraints can CONSTRAINT noInterlakeRes
be named. CHECK (`Interlake’ <>
( SELECT B.bname
FROM Boats B
WHERE B.bid=bid)))
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 27
 Constraints Over Multiple Relations
CREATE TABLE Sailors
( sid INTEGER, Number of boats
sname CHAR(10), plus number of
 Awkward and
rating INTEGER, sailors is < 100
wrong! age REAL,
 If Sailors is PRIMARY KEY (sid),
empty, the CHECK
number of Boats
( (SELECT COUNT (S.sid) FROM Sailors S)
tuples can be
anything! + (SELECT COUNT (B.bid) FROM Boats B) < 100 )
 ASSERTION is the CREATE ASSERTION smallClub
right solution;
CHECK
not associated
with either table. ( (SELECT COUNT (S.sid) FROM Sailors S)
+ (SELECT COUNT (B.bid) FROM Boats B) < 100 )
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 28
 Triggers

 Trigger: procedure that starts automatically if

specified changes occur to the DBMS
 Three parts:
 Event (activates the trigger)
 Condition (tests whether the triggers should run)
 Action (what happens if the trigger runs)

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 29

 Triggers: Example (SQL:1999)

CREATE TRIGGER youngSailorUpdate

AFTER INSERT ON SAILORS
REFERENCING NEW TABLE NewSailors
FOR EACH STATEMENT
INSERT
INTO YoungSailors(sid, name, age, rating)
SELECT sid, name, age, rating
FROM NewSailors N
WHERE N.age <= 18

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 30

 Summary
 SQL was an important factor in the early acceptance
of the relational model; more natural than earlier,
procedural query languages.
 Relationally complete; in fact, significantly more
expressive power than relational algebra.
 Even queries that can be expressed in RA can often
be expressed more naturally in SQL.
 Many alternative ways to write a query; optimizer
should look for most efficient evaluation plan.
 In practice, users need to be aware of how queries are
optimized and evaluated for best results.

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 31

 Summary (Contd.)
 NULL for unknown field values brings many
complications
 SQL allows specification of rich integrity
constraints
 Triggers respond to changes in the database

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 32