Itzik Ben Gan Popular Books

Itzik Ben Gan Biography & Facts

The SQL SELECT statement returns a result set of rows, from one or more tables. A SELECT statement retrieves zero or more rows from one or more database tables or database views. In most applications, SELECT is the most commonly used data manipulation language (DML) command. As SQL is a declarative programming language, SELECT queries specify a result set, but do not specify how to calculate it. The database translates the query into a "query plan" which may vary between executions, database versions and database software. This functionality is called the "query optimizer" as it is responsible for finding the best possible execution plan for the query, within applicable constraints. The SELECT statement has many optional clauses: SELECT list is the list of columns or SQL expressions to be returned by the query. This is approximately the relational algebra projection operation. AS optionally provides an alias for each column or expression in the SELECT list. This is the relational algebra rename operation. FROM specifies from which table to get the data. WHERE specifies which rows to retrieve. This is approximately the relational algebra selection operation. GROUP BY groups rows sharing a property so that an aggregate function can be applied to each group. HAVING selects among the groups defined by the GROUP BY clause. ORDER BY specifies how to order the returned rows. Overview SELECT is the most common operation in SQL, called "the query". SELECT retrieves data from one or more tables, or expressions. Standard SELECT statements have no persistent effects on the database. Some non-standard implementations of SELECT can have persistent effects, such as the SELECT INTO syntax provided in some databases. Queries allow the user to describe desired data, leaving the database management system (DBMS) to carry out planning, optimizing, and performing the physical operations necessary to produce that result as it chooses. A query includes a list of columns to include in the final result, normally immediately following the SELECT keyword. An asterisk ("*") can be used to specify that the query should return all columns of all the queried tables. SELECT is the most complex statement in SQL, with optional keywords and clauses that include: The FROM clause, which indicates the table(s) to retrieve data from. The FROM clause can include optional JOIN subclauses to specify the rules for joining tables. The WHERE clause includes a comparison predicate, which restricts the rows returned by the query. The WHERE clause eliminates all rows from the result set where the comparison predicate does not evaluate to True. The GROUP BY clause projects rows having common values into a smaller set of rows. GROUP BY is often used in conjunction with SQL aggregation functions or to eliminate duplicate rows from a result set. The WHERE clause is applied before the GROUP BY clause. The HAVING clause includes a predicate used to filter rows resulting from the GROUP BY clause. Because it acts on the results of the GROUP BY clause, aggregation functions can be used in the HAVING clause predicate. The ORDER BY clause identifies which column[s] to use to sort the resulting data, and in which direction to sort them (ascending or descending). Without an ORDER BY clause, the order of rows returned by an SQL query is undefined. The DISTINCT keyword eliminates duplicate data. The following example of a SELECT query returns a list of expensive books. The query retrieves all rows from the Book table in which the price column contains a value greater than 100.00. The result is sorted in ascending order by title. The asterisk (*) in the select list indicates that all columns of the Book table should be included in the result set. The example below demonstrates a query of multiple tables, grouping, and aggregation, by returning a list of books and the number of authors associated with each book. Example output might resemble the following: Title Authors ---------------------- ------- SQL Examples and Guide 4 The Joy of SQL 1 An Introduction to SQL 2 Pitfalls of SQL 1 Under the precondition that isbn is the only common column name of the two tables and that a column named title only exists in the Book table, one could re-write the query above in the following form: However, many vendors either do not support this approach, or require certain column-naming conventions for natural joins to work effectively. SQL includes operators and functions for calculating values on stored values. SQL allows the use of expressions in the select list to project data, as in the following example, which returns a list of books that cost more than 100.00 with an additional sales_tax column containing a sales tax figure calculated at 6% of the price. Subqueries Queries can be nested so that the results of one query can be used in another query via a relational operator or aggregation function. A nested query is also known as a subquery. While joins and other table operations provide computationally superior (i.e. faster) alternatives in many cases (all depending on implementation), the use of subqueries introduces a hierarchy in execution that can be useful or necessary. In the following example, the aggregation function AVG receives as input the result of a subquery: A subquery can use values from the outer query, in which case it is known as a correlated subquery. Since 1999 the SQL standard allows WITH clauses, i.e. named subqueries often called common table expressions (named and designed after the IBM DB2 version 2 implementation; Oracle calls these subquery factoring). CTEs can also be recursive by referring to themselves; the resulting mechanism allows tree or graph traversals (when represented as relations), and more generally fixpoint computations. Derived table A derived table is a subquery in a FROM clause. Essentially, the derived table is a subquery that can be selected from or joined to. Derived table functionality allows the user to reference the subquery as a table. The derived table also is referred to as an inline view or a select in from list. In the following example, the SQL statement involves a join from the initial Books table to the derived table "Sales". This derived table captures associated book sales information using the ISBN to join to the Books table. As a result, the derived table provides the result set with additional columns (the number of items sold and the company that sold the books): Examples Given a table T, the query SELECT * FROM T will result in all the elements of all the rows of the table being shown. With the same table, the query SELECT C1 FROM T will result in the elements from the column C1 of all the rows of the table being shown. This is similar to a projection in relational algebra, except that in the general case, the result may contain duplicate rows. This is also known as a Vertical Partition in some database terms, restrictin.... Discover the Itzik Ben Gan popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Itzik Ben Gan books.