Articles Cookbook
23 Jun 2017
Marek Pankowski

SQL Set Operators: Union, Union All, Minus, Intersect

Ever heard terms such as union and intersection in SQL? They're examples of set operators, and they come in handy when you need to combine information from multiple tables or queries. In this article, we'll take a closer look at them. SQL queries let us choose the most important bits from large amounts of information. Of course, we can't expect that all necessary data will be stored in one table.
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20 Jun 2017
Aldo Zelen

Useful SQL Patterns: Date Generator

As you start coding in SQL, you will use some statements and techniques over and over again. We call these “SQL patterns”. This series will look at the most common SQL patterns and consider how to use them. SQL patterns, such as the pivot pattern we discussed last week, can save you a lot of time and effort. Suppose you are asked to get a range of days in a financial quarter, but the only records you have are for the start and end dates of each quarter.
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18 Jun 2017
Aldo Zelen

Useful SQL Patterns: Pivoting

As you start coding in SQL, you will use some statements and techniques over and over again. We call these “SQL patterns”. This series will look at the most common SQL patterns and consider how to use them. The concept of pivot in SQL refers to taking the data in table rows and making that data into columns. This is very important in reporting, and it’s easy to do when you use the CASE statement.
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13 Jun 2017
Francisco Claria

Learning JOINs With Real World SQL Examples

The JOIN statement lets you work with data stored in multiple tables. In this article, I’ll walk you through the topic of JOIN clauses using real world SQL examples. Imagine if you could only work with one database table at a time. Fortunately, this isn’t anything we have to worry about. Once you learn the JOIN statement, you can start linking data together. In this article, I’ll use real world SQL examples that illustrate how we use JOINs, how each type of JOIN works, and when to use each type.
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6 Jun 2017
Dorota Wdzięczna

Using CASE with Data Modifying Statements

What happens when you combine CASE with SQL's data modifying statements? Find out in this article. The CASE expression is a very useful part of SQL and one that you'll employ frequently. We've already covered what the CASE expression does, how to format it, and how to use it in a SELECT statement in "Using CASE to Add Logic to a SELECT". Another article, "How to Sort Records with the ORDER BY Clause"
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29 May 2017
Aldo Zelen

Useful SQL Patterns: Matching Nulls by Masking Nulls

As you start coding in SQL, you will use some statements and techniques over and over again. We call these “SQL patterns”. This series will look at the most common SQL patterns and consider how to use them. In database development, SQL developers often find themselves returning to the same SQL statements. Learning about these now, early in your SQL journey, will help you work more efficiently. Today, in the first post of this series, we will consider the match by null SQL pattern related to SQL data matching.
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18 May 2017
Dorota Wdzięczna

How to Sort Records with the ORDER BY Clause

Relational databases don't store records in alphabetical, numerical, ascending, or in any particular order. The only way to order records in the result set is to use the ORDER BY clause. You can use this clause to order rows by a column, a list of columns, or an expression. You can also order rows using the CASE expression. In this post, we'll take a look at the ORDER BY clause – how to write it, how it works, and what it does.
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15 May 2017
Aldo Zelen

Oracle Top-N Queries for Absolute Beginners

It's common to run a query using only part of a dataset – for example, the top 100 salespeople in a company. In this article, we'll see how to use Oracle's Top-N query method to query just these rows. Top-N queries retrieve a defined number of rows (top or bottom) from a result set. In other words, they find the best or worst of something – the ten best selling cars in a certain region, the five most popular routers, the 20 worst-performing stores, etc.
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8 May 2017
Dejan Sarka

Statistics in SQL: Centers of Distribution

My previous article explained how to calculate frequencies using T-SQL queries. Frequencies are used to analyze the distribution of discrete variables. Today, we’ll continue learning about statistics and SQL. In particular, we’ll focus on calculating centers of distribution. We’ll learn e.g. how to calculate the SQL median, what functions to use to calculate the SQL mode, and how to calculate various types of mean in SQL (geometric mean, harmonic mean and, of course, arithmetic mean).
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7 May 2017
Dorota Wdzięczna

Using CASE to Add Logic to a SELECT

As you write an SQL query, you may need to get values from multiple columns and change values from one form to another. The simple way to achieve this goal is to add a CASE expression to your SELECT statement. In this article, we'll introduce you to the syntax, formats, and uses of the CASE expression. The CASE expression is a conditional expression: it evaluates data and returns a result.
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