SQL Tips & Tricks:

How to Write Efficient

Queries and Boost
Performance
 SQL Introduction
Standard language for querying and manipulating data

Structured Query Language

Many standards out there:

• ANSI SQL, SQL92 (a.k.a. SQL2), SQL99 (a.k.a. SQL3), ….
• Vendors support various subsets: watch for fun discussions in class !
SQL

 Data Definition Language (DDL)

 Create/alter/delete tables and their attributes
 Following lectures...
 Data Manipulation Language (DML)
 Query one or more tables – discussed next !
 Insert/delete/modify tuples in tables
 Table name Attribute names
Tables in SQL
Product

PName Price Category Manufacturer

Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks

Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks

SingleTouch $149.99 Photography Canon

MultiTouch $203.99 Household Hitachi

Tuples or rows
 Tables Explained

 The schema of a table is the table name and its attributes:

Product(PName, Price, Category, Manfacturer)

 A key is an attribute whose values are unique;

we underline a key

Product(PName, Price, Category, Manfacturer)

Data Types in SQL

 Atomic types:
 Characters: CHAR(20), VARCHAR(50)
 Numbers: INT, BIGINT, SMALLINT, FLOAT
 Others: MONEY, DATETIME, …

 Every attribute must have an atomic type

 Hence tables are flat
 Why ?
Tables Explained

 A tuple = a record
 Restriction: all attributes are of atomic type

 A table = a set of tuples

 Like a list…
 …but it is unorderd:
no first(), no next(), no last().
 SQL Query

Basic form: (plus many many more bells and whistles)

SELECT <attributes>
FROM <one or more relations>
WHERE <conditions>
 Simple SQL Query

Product PName Price Category Manufacturer

Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
SingleTouch $149.99 Photography Canon
MultiTouch $203.99 Household Hitachi

SELECT *
FROM Product
WHERE category=‘Gadgets’

PName Price Category Manufacturer

Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks

“selection” Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks

 Simple SQL Query

Product PName Price Category Manufacturer

Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
SingleTouch $149.99 Photography Canon
MultiTouch $203.99 Household Hitachi

SELECT PName, Price, Manufacturer

FROM Product
WHERE Price > 100

PName Price Manufacturer

“selection” and SingleTouch $149.99 Canon
“projection” MultiTouch $203.99 Hitachi
 Notation

Input Schema

Product(PName, Price, Category, Manfacture

SELECT PName, Price, Manufacturer

FROM Product
WHERE Price > 100

Answer(PName, Price, Manfacturer)

Output Schema
Details

 Case insensitive:
 Same: SELECT Select select
 Same: Product product
 Different: ‘Seattle’ ‘seattle’

 Constants:
 ‘abc’ - yes
 “abc” - no
The LIKE operator

SELECT *
FROM Products
WHERE PName LIKE ‘%gizmo%’

 s LIKE p: pattern matching on strings

 p may contain two special symbols:
 % = any sequence of characters
 _ = any single character
Eliminating Duplicates

Category
SELECT DISTINCT category Gadgets
FROM Product
Photography
Household

Compare to:

Category
Gadgets
SELECT category
Gadgets
FROM Product
Photography
Household
 Ordering the Results

SELECT pname, price, manufacturer

FROM Product
WHERE category=‘gizmo’ AND price > 50
ORDER BY price, pname

Ties are broken by the second attribute on the ORDER BY list, etc.

Ordering is ascending, unless you specify the DESC keyword.

 PName Price Category Manufacturer
Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
SingleTouch $149.99 Photography Canon
MultiTouch $203.99 Household Hitachi

SELECT DISTINCT category

?
FROM Product
ORDER BY category

?
SELECT Category
FROM Product
ORDER BY PName

?
SELECT DISTINCT category
FROM Product
ORDER BY PName
 Keys and Foreign Keys
Company

CName StockPrice Country

GizmoWorks 25 USA
Key
Canon 65 Japan

Hitachi 15 Japan

Product

PName Price Category Manufacturer

Foreign
Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks key
Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
SingleTouch $149.99 Photography Canon
MultiTouch $203.99 Household Hitachi
Joins

Product (pname, price, category, manufacturer)

Company (cname, stockPrice, country)

Find all products under $200 manufactured in Japan;

return their names and prices.

Join
between Product
and Company
SELECT PName, Price
FROM Product, Company
WHERE Manufacturer=CName AND Country=‘Japan’
AND Price <= 200
 Joins
Product Company
PName Price Category Manufacturer Cname StockPrice Country
Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
GizmoWorks 25 USA
Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks Canon 65 Japan
SingleTouch $149.99 Photography Canon Hitachi 15 Japan
MultiTouch $203.99 Household Hitachi

SELECT PName, Price

FROM Product, Company
WHERE Manufacturer=CName AND Country=‘Japan’
AND Price <= 200 PName Price
SingleTouch $149.99
More Joins

Product (pname, price, category, manufacturer)

Company (cname, stockPrice, country)

Find all Chinese companies that manufacture products both in the

‘electronic’ and ‘toy’ categories

SELECT cname

FROM

WHERE
A Subtlety about Joins

Product (pname, price, category, manufacturer)

Company (cname, stockPrice, country)

Find all countries that manufacture some product in the ‘Gadgets’

category.

SELECT Country
FROM Product, Company
WHERE Manufacturer=CName AND Category=‘Gadgets’

Unexpected duplicates
 A Subtlety about Joins
Product Company
Name Price Category Manufacturer Cname StockPrice Country
Gizmo $19.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks
GizmoWorks 25 USA
Powergizmo $29.99 Gadgets GizmoWorks Canon 65 Japan
SingleTouch $149.99 Photography Canon Hitachi 15 Japan
MultiTouch $203.99 Household Hitachi

SELECT Country
FROM Product, Company
WHERE Manufacturer=CName AND Category=‘Gadgets’

Country
What is ??
the problem ? ??
What’s the
solution ?
 Tuple Variables

Person(pname, address, worksfor)

Company(cname, address)
Which
SELECT DISTINCT pname, address address ?
FROM Person, Company
WHERE worksfor = cname

SELECT DISTINCT Person.pname, Company.address

FROM Person, Company
WHERE Person.worksfor = Company.cname

SELECT DISTINCT x.pname, y.address

FROM Person AS x, Company AS y
WHERE x.worksfor = y.cname
 Meaning (Semantics) of SQL
Queries
SELECT a1, a2, …, ak
FROM R1 AS x1, R2 AS x2, …, Rn AS xn
WHERE Conditions

Answer = {}
for x1 in R1 do
for x2 in R2 do
…..
for xn in Rn do
if Conditions
then Answer = Answer  {(a1,…,ak)}
return Answer
An Unintuitive Query

SELECT DISTINCT R.A

FROM R, S, T
WHERE R.A=S.A OR R.A=T.A

What does it compute ?

Computes R  (S  T) But what if S =  ?

 Subqueries Returning
Relations
Company(name, city)
Product(pname, maker)
Purchase(id, product, buyer)
Return cities where one can find companies that manufacture
products bought by Joe Blow

SELECT Company.city
FROM Company
WHERE Company.name IN
(SELECT Product.maker
FROM Purchase , Product
WHERE Product.pname=Purchase.product
AND Purchase .buyer = ‘Joe Blow‘);
Subqueries Returning
Relations
Is it equivalent to this ?

SELECT Company.city
FROM Company, Product, Purchase
WHERE Company.name= Product.maker
AND Product.pname = Purchase.product
AND Purchase.buyer = ‘Joe Blow’

Beware of duplicates !
Removing Duplicates
SELECT DISTINCT Company.city
FROM Company
WHERE Company.name IN
(SELECT Product.maker
FROM Purchase , Product
WHERE Product.pname=Purchase.product
AND Purchase .buyer = ‘Joe Blow‘);

SELECT DISTINCT Company.city

Now
FROM Company, Product, Purchase
they are
WHERE Company.name= Product.maker
equivalent
AND Product.pname = Purchase.product
AND Purchase.buyer = ‘Joe Blow’
Subqueries Returning
Relations
You can also use: s > ALL R
s > ANY R
EXISTS R

Product ( pname, price, category, maker)

Find products that are more expensive than all those produced
By “Gizmo-Works”

SELECT name
FROM Product
WHERE price > ALL (SELECT price
FROM Purchase
WHERE maker=‘Gizmo-Works’)
Question for Database Fans
and their Friends
 Can we express this query as a single SELECT-FROM-WHERE query,
without subqueries ?
Question for Database Fans
and their Friends

 Answer:all SFW queries are

monotone (figure out what this
means). A query with ALL is not
monotone
 Correlated Queries

Movie (title, year, director, length)

Find movies whose title appears more than once.

correlation

SELECT DISTINCT title

FROM Movie AS x
WHERE year <> ANY
(SELECT year
FROM Movie
WHERE title = x.title);

Note (1) scope of variables (2) this can still be expressed as single SFW
 Complex Correlated Query

Product ( pname, price, category, maker, year)

 Find products (and their manufacturers) that are more
expensive than all products made by the same
manufacturer before 1972
SELECT DISTINCT pname, maker
FROM Product AS x
WHERE price > ALL (SELECT price
FROM Product AS y
WHERE x.maker = y.maker AND y.year < 1972);

Very powerful ! Also much harder to optimize.

Aggregation

SELECT avg(price) SELECT count(*)

FROM Product FROM Product
WHERE maker=“Toyota” WHERE year > 1995

SQL supports several aggregation operations:

sum, count, min, max, avg

Except count, all aggregations apply to a single attribute

 Aggregation: Count

COUNT applies to duplicates, unless otherwise stated:

SELECT Count(category) same as Count(*)

FROM Product
WHERE year > 1995

We probably want:

SELECT Count(DISTINCT category)

FROM Product
WHERE year > 1995
More Examples

Purchase(product, date, price, quantity)

SELECT Sum(price * quantity)

FROM Purchase

What do
they mean ?

SELECT Sum(price * quantity)

FROM Purchase
WHERE product = ‘bagel’
 Simple Aggregations
Purchase
Product Date Price Quantity
Bagel 10/21 1 20
Banana 10/3 0.5 10
Banana 10/10 1 10
Bagel 10/25 1.50 20

SELECT Sum(price * quantity)

FROM Purchase 50 (= 20+30)
WHERE product = ‘bagel’
 Grouping and Aggregation
Purchase(product, date, price, quantity)

Find total sales after 10/1/2005 per product.

SELECT product, Sum(price*quantity) AS TotalSales

FROM Purchase
WHERE date > ‘10/1/2005’
GROUP BY product

Let’s see what this means…

 Grouping and Aggregation

1. Compute the FROM and WHERE clauses.

2. Group by the attributes in the GROUPBY

3. Compute the SELECT clause: grouped attributes and aggregates.

1&2. FROM-WHERE-GROUPBY

Product Date Price Quantity

Bagel 10/21 1 20
Bagel 10/25 1.50 20
Banana 10/3 0.5 10
Banana 10/10 1 10
 3. SELECT

Product Date Price Quantity Product TotalSales

Bagel 10/21 1 20
Bagel 10/25 1.50 20 Bagel 50
Banana 10/3 0.5 10
Banana 10/10 1 10
Banana 15

SELECT product, Sum(price*quantity) AS TotalSales

FROM Purchase
WHERE date > ‘10/1/2005’
GROUP BY product
 GROUP BY v.s. Nested Quereis

SELECT product, Sum(price*quantity) AS TotalSales

FROM Purchase
WHERE date > ‘10/1/2005’
GROUP BY product

SELECT DISTINCT x.product, (SELECT Sum(y.price*y.quantity)

FROM Purchase y
WHERE x.product = y.product
AND y.date > ‘10/1/2005’)
AS TotalSales
FROM Purchase x
WHERE x.date > ‘10/1/2005’
Another Example

What does
it mean ?

SELECT product,
sum(price * quantity) AS SumSales
max(quantity) AS MaxQuantity
FROM Purchase
GROUP BY product
 HAVING Clause

Same query, except that we consider only products that had

at least 100 buyers.

SELECT product, Sum(price * quantity)

FROM Purchase
WHERE date > ‘10/1/2005’
GROUP BY product
HAVING Sum(quantity) > 30

HAVING clause contains conditions on aggregates.

General form of Grouping and
Aggregation
SELECT S
FROM R1,…,Rn
WHERE C1
GROUP BY a1,…,ak Why ?
HAVING C2

S = may contain attributes a1,…,ak and/or any

aggregates but NO OTHER ATTRIBUTES
C1 = is any condition on the attributes in R1,…,Rn
C2 = is any condition on aggregate expressions
 General form of Grouping and
Aggregation
SELECT S
FROM R1,…,Rn
WHERE C1
GROUP BY a1,…,ak
HAVING C2

Evaluation steps:
1. Evaluate FROM-WHERE, apply condition C1
2. Group by the attributes a1,…,ak
3. Apply condition C2 to each group (may have aggregates)
4. Compute aggregates in S and return the result
Advanced SQLizing

1. Getting around INTERSECT and EXCEPT

2. Quantifiers

3. Aggregation v.s. subqueries

 INTERSECT and EXCEPT: not in SQL Server

1. INTERSECT and EXCEPT:

If R, S have no
duplicates, then can
write without
subqueries
(SELECT R.A, R.B SELECT R.A, R.B (HOW ?)
FROM R) FROM R
INTERSECT WHERE
(SELECT S.A, S.B EXISTS(SELECT *
FROM S) FROM S
WHERE R.A=S.A and R.B=S.B)

(SELECT R.A, R.B SELECT R.A, R.B

FROM R) FROM R
EXCEPT WHERE
(SELECT S.A, S.B NOT EXISTS(SELECT *
FROM S) FROM S
WHERE R.A=S.A and R.B=S.B)
 2. Quantifiers

Product ( pname, price, company)

Company( cname, city)

Find all companies that make some products with price < 100

SELECT DISTINCT Company.cname

FROM Company, Product
WHERE Company.cname = Product.company and Product.price < 100

Existential: easy ! ☺
2. Quantifiers

Product ( pname, price, company)

Company( cname, city)

Find all companies that make only products with price < 100

same as:

Find all companies s.t. all of their products have price < 100

Universal: hard ! 
 2. Quantifiers

1. Find the other companies: i.e. s.t. some product  100

SELECT DISTINCT Company.cname

FROM Company
WHERE Company.cname IN (SELECT Product.company
FROM Product
WHERE Produc.price >= 100

2. Find all companies s.t. all their products have price < 100

SELECT DISTINCT Company.cname

FROM Company
WHERE Company.cname NOT IN (SELECT Product.company
FROM Product
WHERE Produc.price >= 100
 3. Group-by v.s. Nested Query
Author(login,name)
Wrote(login,url)
 Find authors who wrote  10 documents:
This is
 Attempt 1: with nested queries
SQL by
a novice

SELECT DISTINCT Author.name

FROM Author
WHERE count(SELECT Wrote.url
FROM Wrote
WHERE Author.login=Wrote.login)
> 10
3. Group-by v.s. Nested Query

 Find all authors who wrote at least 10 documents:

 Attempt 2: SQL style (with GROUP BY)

SELECT Author.name This is

FROM Author, Wrote SQL by
WHERE Author.login=Wrote.login an expert
GROUP BY Author.name
HAVING count(wrote.url) > 10

No need for DISTINCT: automatically from GROUP BY

 3. Group-by v.s. Nested Query

Author(login,name)
Wrote(login,url)
Mentions(url,word)
Find authors with vocabulary  10000 words:

SELECT Author.name
FROM Author, Wrote, Mentions
WHERE Author.login=Wrote.login AND Wrote.url=Mentions.url
GROUP BY Author.name
HAVING count(distinct Mentions.word) > 10000
 Two Examples

Store(sid, sname)
Product(pid, pname, price, sid)

Find all stores that sell only products with price > 100

same as:

Find all stores s.t. all their products have price > 100)
SELECT Store.name
FROM Store, Product
WHERE Store.sid = Product.sid
Why both ?
GROUP BY Store.sid, Store.name
HAVING 100 < min(Product.price)

SELECT Store.name
FROM Store
WHERE
Almost equivalent… 100 < ALL (SELECT Product.price
FROM product
WHERE Store.sid = Product.sid)

SELECT Store.name
FROM Store
WHERE Store.sid NOT IN
(SELECT Product.sid
FROM Product
WHERE Product.price <= 100)
Two Examples

Store(sid, sname)
Product(pid, pname, price, sid)

For each store,

find its most expensive product
 Two Examples
This is easy but doesn’t do what we want:
SELECT Store.sname, max(Product.price)
FROM Store, Product
WHERE Store.sid = Product.sid
GROUP BY Store.sid, Store.sname

Better:
SELECT Store.sname, x.pname
FROM Store, Product x
WHERE Store.sid = x.sid and
But may x.price >=
return ALL (SELECT y.price
multiple FROM Product y
product names WHERE Store.sid = y.sid)
per store
Two Examples
Finally, choose some pid arbitrarily, if there are many
with highest price:

SELECT Store.sname, max(x.pname)

FROM Store, Product x
WHERE Store.sid = x.sid and
x.price >=
ALL (SELECT y.price
FROM Product y
WHERE Store.sid = y.sid)
GROUP BY Store.sname
NULLS in SQL

 Whenever we don’t have a value, we can put

a NULL
 Can mean many things:
 Value does not exists
 Value exists but is unknown
 Value not applicable
 Etc.
 The schema specifies for each attribute if can
be null (nullable attribute) or not
 How does SQL cope with tables that have
NULLs ?
Null Values

 If x= NULL then 4*(3-x)/7 is still NULL

 If x= NULL then x=“Joe” is UNKNOWN

 In SQL there are three boolean values:
FALSE = 0
UNKNOWN = 0.5
TRUE = 1
Null Values

 C1 AND C2 = min(C1, C2)

 C1 OR C2 = max(C1, C2)
 NOT C1 = 1 – C1

SELECT * E.g.
FROM Person age=20
WHERE (age < 25) AND heigth=NULL
weight=200
(height > 6 OR weight > 190)
Rule in SQL: include only tuples that yield TRUE
Null Values

Unexpected behavior:

SELECT *
FROM Person
WHERE
Some Persons areage < 25! OR age >= 25
not included
Null Values

Can test for NULL explicitly:

x IS NULL
 x IS NOT NULL

SELECT *
FROM Person
WHERE age < 25 OR age >= 25 OR age IS NULL

Now it includes all Persons

 Outerjoins

Explicit joins in SQL = “inner joins”:

Product(name, category)
Purchase(prodName, store)

SELECT Product.name, Purchase.store

FROM Product JOIN Purchase ON
Product.name = Purchase.prodName

Same as: SELECT Product.name, Purchase.store

FROM Product, Purchase
WHERE Product.name = Purchase.prodName

But Products that never sold will be lost !

 Outerjoins

Left outer joins in SQL:

Product(name, category)
Purchase(prodName, store)

SELECT Product.name, Purchase.store

FROM Product LEFT OUTER JOIN Purchase ON
Product.name = Purchase.prodName
Product Purchase

Name Category ProdName Store

Gizmo gadget Gizmo Wiz

Camera Photo Camera Ritz

OneClick Photo Camera Wiz

Name Store

Gizmo Wiz

Camera Ritz

Camera Wiz

OneClick NULL
 Application

Compute, for each product, the total number of sales in

‘September’
Product(name, category)
Purchase(prodName, month, store)
SELECT Product.name, count(*)
FROM Product, Purchase
WHERE Product.name = Purchase.prodName
and Purchase.month = ‘September’
GROUP BY Product.name

What’s wrong ?
 Application

Compute, for each product, the total number of sales in

‘September’
Product(name, category)
Purchase(prodName, month, store)
SELECT Product.name, count(*)
FROM Product LEFT OUTER JOIN Purchase ON
Product.name = Purchase.prodName
and Purchase.month = ‘September’
GROUP BY Product.name

Now we also get the products who sold in 0 quantity

Outer Joins

 Left outer join:

 Include the left tuple even if there’s no
match
 Right outer join:
 Include the right tuple even if there’s no
match
 Full outer join:
 Include the both left and right tuples even
if there’s no match
Modifying the Database

Three kinds of modifications

 Insertions
 Deletions
 Updates

Sometimes they are all called “updates”

 Insertions

General form:

INSERT INTO R(A1,…., An) VALUES (v1,…., vn)

Example: Insert a new purchase to the database:

INSERT INTO Purchase(buyer, seller, product, store)

VALUES (‘Joe’, ‘Fred’, ‘wakeup-clock-espresso-machine’,
‘The Sharper Image’)

Missing attribute → NULL.

May drop attribute names if give them in order.
Insertions

INSERT INTO PRODUCT(name)

SELECT DISTINCT Purchase.product

FROM Purchase
WHERE Purchase.date > “10/26/01”

The query replaces the VALUES keyword.

Here we insert many tuples into PRODUCT
 Insertion: an Example

Product(name, listPrice, category)

Purchase(prodName, buyerName, price)

prodName is foreign key in Product.name

Suppose database got corrupted and we need to fix it:

Purchase
Product
prodName buyerName price
name listPrice category
camera John 200

gizmo 100 gadgets gizmo Smith 80

camera Smith 225

Task: insert in Product all prodNames from Purchase

 Insertion: an Example

INSERT INTO Product(name)

SELECT DISTINCT prodName

FROM Purchase
WHERE prodName NOT IN (SELECT name FROM Product)

name listPrice category

gizmo 100 Gadgets

camera - -
 Insertion: an Example

INSERT INTO Product(name, listPrice)

SELECT DISTINCT prodName, price

FROM Purchase
WHERE prodName NOT IN (SELECT name FROM Product)

name listPrice category

gizmo 100 Gadgets

camera 200 -

camera ?? 225 ?? - Depends on the implementation

Deletions
Example:

DELETE FROM PURCHASE

WHERE seller = ‘Joe’ AND

product = ‘Brooklyn Bridge’

Factoid about SQL: there is no way to delete only a single

occurrence of a tuple that appears twice
in a relation.
Updates
Example:

UPDATE PRODUCT
SET price = price/2
WHERE Product.name IN
(SELECT product
FROM Purchase
WHERE Date =‘Oct, 25, 1999’);