2

Restricting and Sorting Data

Copyright © Oracle Corporation, 2001. All rights

 Objectives

After completing this lesson, you should be able to

do the following:
• Limit the rows retrieved by a query
• Sort the rows retrieved by a query

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 Limiting Rows Using a Selection

EMPLOYEES

“retrieve all
employees
in department 90”

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 Limiting the Rows Selected

• Restrict the rows returned by using the WHERE

clause.
SELECT *|{[DISTINCT] column|expression [alias],...}
FROM table
[WHERE condition(s)];

• The WHERE clause follows the FROM clause.

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 Using the WHERE Clause

SELECT employee_id, last_name, job_id, department_id

FROM employees
WHERE department_id = 90 ;

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 Character Strings and Dates

• Character strings and date values are enclosed in

single quotation marks.
• Character values are case sensitive, and date
values are format sensitive.
• The default date format is DD-MON-RR.
SELECT last_name, job_id, department_id
FROM employees
WHERE last_name = 'Whalen';

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 Comparison Conditions

Operator Meaning

= Equal to

> Greater than

>= Greater than or equal to

< Less than

<= Less than or equal to

<> Not equal to

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 Using Comparison Conditions

SELECT last_name, salary

FROM employees
WHERE salary <= 3000;

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 Other Comparison Conditions

Operator Meaning

BETWEEN Between two values (inclusive),

...AND...

IN(set) Match any of a list of values

LIKE Match a character pattern

IS NULL Is a null value

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 Using the BETWEEN Condition

Use the BETWEEN condition to display rows based on a

range of values.
SELECT last_name, salary
FROM employees
WHERE salary BETWEEN 2500 AND 3500;

Lower limit Upper limit

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 Using the IN Condition

Use the IN membership condition to test for values in

a list.
SELECT employee_id, last_name, salary, manager_id
FROM employees
WHERE manager_id IN (100, 101, 201);

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 Using the LIKE Condition

• Use the LIKE condition to perform wildcard

searches of valid search string values.
• Search conditions can contain either literal
characters or numbers:
– % denotes zero or many characters.
– _ denotes one character.

SELECT first_name
FROM employees
WHERE first_name LIKE 'S%';

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 Using the LIKE Condition

• You can combine pattern-matching characters.

SELECT last_name
FROM employees
WHERE last_name LIKE '_o%';

• You can use the ESCAPE identifier to search for the

actual % and _ symbols.

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 Using the NULL Conditions

Test for nulls with the IS NULL operator.

SELECT last_name, manager_id

FROM employees
WHERE manager_id IS NULL;

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 Logical Conditions

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

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 Using the AND Operator

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%';

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 Using the OR Operator

OR requires
OR requires either
either condition
condition to
to be
be true.
true.
SELECT employee_id, last_name, job_id, salary
FROM employees
WHERE salary >= 10000
OR job_id LIKE '%MAN%';

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 Using the NOT Operator

SELECT last_name, job_id

FROM employees
WHERE job_id
NOT IN ('IT_PROG', 'ST_CLERK', 'SA_REP');

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 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.

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 Rules of Precedence

SELECT last_name, job_id, salary

FROM employees
WHERE job_id = 'SA_REP'
OR job_id = 'AD_PRES'
AND salary > 15000;

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 Rules of Precedence

Use
Use parentheses
parentheses to
to force
force priority.
priority.

SELECT last_name, job_id, salary

FROM employees
WHERE (job_id = 'SA_REP'
OR job_id = 'AD_PRES')
AND salary > 15000;

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 ORDER BY Clause

• Sort rows with the ORDER BY clause

– ASC: ascending order, default
– DESC: descending order
• The ORDER BY clause comes last in the SELECT
statement.
SELECT last_name, job_id, department_id, hire_date
FROM employees
ORDER BY hire_date ;

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 Sorting in Descending Order

SELECT last_name, job_id, department_id, hire_date

FROM employees
ORDER BY hire_date DESC ;

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 Sorting by Column Alias

SELECT employee_id, last_name, salary*12 annsal

FROM employees
ORDER BY annsal;

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 Sorting by Multiple Columns

• 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;

…
• You can sort by a column that is not in the
SELECT list.

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 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, IN, LIKE, and NULL conditions
– Apply the logical AND, OR, and NOT operators
• Use the ORDER BY clause to sort rows of output
SELECT *|{[DISTINCT] column|expression [alias],...}
FROM table
[WHERE condition(s)]
[ORDER BY {column, expr, alias} [ASC|DESC]];

2-26 Copyright © Oracle Corporation, 2001. All rights

 Practice 2 Overview

This practice covers the following topics:

• Selecting data and changing the order of
rows displayed
• Restricting rows by using the WHERE clause
• Sorting rows by using the ORDER BY clause

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