Restricting and Sorting Data

Objective
After completing this lesson, you should be able to do :

• Limit the rows retrieved by a query

• Sort the rows retrieved by a query
 Limiting the Rows Selected
• Use the WHERE clause
SELECT * | { [DISTINCT] column/expression [alias],…
}
FROM table
[ WHERE conditions(s) ];
• The WHERE clause follows the FROM clause.
• The condition is composed of column names, expressions,
constants and a comparison operator
• Example :
SELECT employee_id, last_name, job_id, department_id
FROM employees
WHERE department_id = 90;
 Character Strings and Dates
• Are enclosed in single quotation marks
• Character values are case sensitive
• Date values are format sensitive
• The default date format is DD-MON-RR
• Example :
SELECT last_name, job_id, department_id
FROM employees
WHERE last_name = ‘Whalen’ ;
 Comparison Operators
Operator Meaning
= Equal to
> Greater than
>= Greater than or equal to
< Less than
<= Less than or equal to
<> , != , ^= Not Equal to
They are used in the WHERE clause in the following Format.
Syntax :
….. WHERE expr operator value
 Other Comparison Operators
Operator Meaning
BETWEEN..AND… Between two values (inclusive)
IN(Set) Match any of a list of values
LIKE Match a character pattern
IS NULL Is a null value
• Use the LIKE condition to perform wildcard searches of
valid search string values
- % denotes zero or many characters
- _ denotes one character (underscore)
 Examples
• BETWEEN..AND… operator
SELECT ename, sal FROM emp
WHERE sal BETWEEN 2500 AND 3500;
• IN operator
SELECT empno, ename, sal FROM emp
WHERE mgr IN (100, 101, 201);
• LIKE operator
SELECT ename FROM emp
WHERE ename LIKE ‘S%’ ;
• IS NULL operator
SELECT ename, mgr FROM emp
WHERE comm IS NULL;
 Logical Operator
Operator Meaning
AND Returns TRUE if both component
conditions are true
OR Returns TRUE if either component
condition is true
NOT Returns TRUE if the following
condition is false

• Combines the result of two component conditions to produce a

single result
• With these operators we can use several conditions in one
WHERE clause.
 Using the AND Operators
• AND requires both conditions to be true
SELECT employee_id, last_name, job_id, salary
FROM employees
WHERE salary >=10000 AND job_id LIKE
‘%MAN%’ ;

AND TRUE FALSE NULL

TRUE TRUE FALSE NULL
FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
NULL NULL FALSE NULL
 Using the OR operator
• OR requires either condition to be true
SELECT employee_id, last_name, job_id, salary
FROM employees
WHERE salary > 10000 OR job_id LIKE ‘%MAN%’ ;

OR TRUE FALSE NULL

TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
FALSE TRUE FALSE NULL
NULL TRUE NULL NULL
 Using the NOT Operator
• To negate the result we use the NOT Operator
SELECT last_name, job_id
FROM employees
WHERE job_id NOT IN ( ‘IT_PROG’, ‘ST_CLERK’ );

NOT TRUE FALSE NULL

FALSE TRUE NULL
 Rules of Precedence
Order Evaluated Operator
1 Arithmetic operators
2 Concatenation operator
3 Comparison conditions
4 IS [NOT] NULL, LIKE, [NOT] IN
5 [NOT] BETWEEN
6 NOT logical condition
7 AND logical condition
8 OR logical condition
Override rules of precedence by using parentheses.
The same precedence operators work from left to
right.
 ORDER BY Clause
• Sort rows with the ORDER BY clause
- ASC : Ascending order, default
- DESC : Descending order
• Syntax :
SELECT expr,column(s) FROM table
[WHERE condition(s)]
[ORDER BY {column, expr} [ASC|DESC] ] ;
• Default Ordering of Data
 Numeric values lowest values first 1 - 999
 Date values earliest value first 1-jan-92 before 1-
jan-95
 Character values alphabetical order a first and z last
 Null values last
 Sorting Examples
• SELECT last_name, job_id, department_id, hire_date
FROM employees
ORDER BY hire_date ;
• SELECT last_name, job_id, department_id, hire_date
FROM employees
ORDER BY hire_date DESC ;
• Sort order can be specified by position value also
SELECT last_name, job_id, department_id, hire_date
FROM employees
ORDER BY 3 DESC ;
 Some more sorting methods
• Sorting by Column Alias
SELECT employee_id, last_name, salary*12
annsal
FROM employees
ORDER BY annsal ;
• Sorting by Multiple Columns
- we can use multiple columns in the ORDER BY clause
- The order of ORDER BY list is the order of sort
SELECT last_name, department_id, salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY department_id, salary DESC;
 Summary
In this lesson, you should have learned how to :
• Use the WHERE clause to restrict rows of output
- use the comparison conditions
- use the BETWEEN..AND.. , IN , LIKE , and NULL conditions
- Apply the logical AND, OR, and NOT operators
• Use the ORDER BY clause to sort rows of output