MySQL Tutorial: part 1

Querying data

SELECT

the syntax of the SELECT statement:

SELECT 
    column_1, column_2, ...
FROM
    table_1
[INNER | LEFT |RIGHT] JOIN table_2 ON conditions
WHERE
    conditions
GROUP BY column_1
HAVING group_conditions
ORDER BY column_1
LIMIT offset, length;

If you want to get data for all columns in the employees table, you can list all column names in the SELECT clause. Or you just use the asterisk (*) to indicate that you want to get data from all columns of the table like the following query:

SELECT * FROM table1;

DISTINCT

The syntax of using the DISTINCT clause is as follows:

SELECT DISTINCT
    columns
FROM
    table_name
WHERE
    where_conditions;

• DISTINCT clause vs. GROUP BY clause

If you use the GROUP BY clause in the SELECT statement without using aggregate functions, the GROUP BY clause behaves like the DISTINCT clause.

Generally speaking, the DISTINCT clause is a special case of the GROUP BY clause. The difference between DISTINCT clause and GROUP BY clause is that the GROUP BY clause sorts the result set whereas the DISTINCT clause does not.

for examples,

SELECT
  columns
FROM
  table_name
GROUP BY columns;

is equivalent to

SELECT DISTINCT
  columns
FROM
  table_name
ORDER BY columns;

Filtering Data

WHERE

Even though the WHERE clause appears at the end of the statement, MySQL evaluates the expression in the WHERE clause first to select the matching rows.

The following table lists the comparison operators that you can use to form filtering expressions in the WHERE clause.

where

AND

The following illustrates the results of the AND operator when combining true, false, and null.

and

OR

The following table shows the result of the OR operator.

or

IN

The IN operator allows you to determine if a specified value matches any one of a list or a subquery.
The following illustrates the syntax of the IN operator.

SELECT 
    column1,column2,...
FROM
    table_name
WHERE 
 (expr|column_1) [NOT] IN ('value1','value2',...);

!Note that if the expr or any value in the list is NULL, the IN operator returns NULL

You can combine the IN operator with the NOT operator to determine if a value does not match any value in a list or a subquery.

BETWEEN

The BETWEEN operator allows you to specify a range to test.

The following illustrates the syntax of the BETWEEN operator:

expr [NOT] BETWEEN begin_expr AND end_expr;

!NOTE If any expression is NULL, the BETWEEN operator returns a NULL value.

• with DATA type

When you use the BETWEEN operator with date values, to get the best result, you should use the type cast to explicitly convert the type of column or expression to the DATE type.

CAST('2020-01-01' as DATE)

LIKE

MySQL provides two wildcard characters for using with the LIKE operator, the percentage % and underscore _ .

% wildcard allows you to match any string of zero or more characters.
_ wildcard allows you to match any single character.

• with ESCAPE clause

If you don’t specify the escape character explicitly, the backslash character \ is the default escape character.

SELECT 
    columns
FROM
    table_name
WHERE
    column LIKE '%\_20%';

Or you can specify a different escape character e.g., $ by using the ESCAPE clause:

SELECT 
    columns
FROM
    table_name
WHERE
    column LIKE '%$_20%' ESCAPE '$';

LIMIT

The LIMIT clause is used in the SELECT statement to constrain the number of rows in a result set.

The following illustrates the LIMIT clause syntax with two arguments:

SELECT 
    column1,column2,...
FROM
    table
LIMIT offset , count;

The offset specifies the offset of the first row to return. The offset of the first row is 0, not 1.
The count specifies the maximum number of rows to return.

When you use the LIMIT clause with one argument, this argument will be used to determine the maximum number of rows to return from the beginning of the result set.

SELECT 
    column1,column2,...
FROM
    table
LIMIT count;

The query above is equivalent to the following query with the LIMIT clause that accepts two arguments:

SELECT 
    column1,column2,...
FROM
    table
LIMIT 0 , count;

• Using MySQL LIMIT to get the first N rows

SELECT 
    column1,column2,...
FROM
    table
LIMIT N;

• Using MySQL LIMIT to get the highest and lowest values
  The LIMIT clause often used with the ORDER BY clause. First, you use the ORDER BY clause to sort the result set based on certain criteria, and then you use the LIMIT clause to find lowest or highest values.

• Using MySQL LIMIT to get the nth highest value

SELECT 
    column1, column2,...
FROM
    table
ORDER BY column1 DESC
LIMIT nth-1, count;

IS NULL

value IS [NOT] NULL

• MySQL IS NULL’s specialized features

1. If the DATE or DATETIME column that has NOT NULL constraint and contains the special date 0000-00-00, you can use the IS NULL operator to find such rows.

2. If the variable @@sql_auto_is_null is set to 1, you can get the value of a generated column after executing an INSERT statement by using the IS NULL operator. Note that by default the variable @@sql_auto_is_null is 0.

Sorting Data

ORDER BY

The ORDER BY clause allows you to:

• Sort a result set by a single column or multiple columns.
• Sort a result set by different columns in ascending or descending order.

The following illustrates the syntax of the ORDER BY clause:

SELECT column1, column2,...
FROM tbl
ORDER BY column1 [ASC|DESC], column2 [ASC|DESC],...

By default, the ORDER BY clause sorts the result set in ascending order if you don’t specify ASC or DESC explicitly.

• with customer sort order
  The ORDER BY clause enables you to define your own custom sort order for the values in a column using the FIELD() function.

ELECT 
    column_1, column_2, ...
FROM
    table_1
ORDER BY FIELD(status,
        'Red',
        'Green',
        'Blue',
        'Black',
        'White');

Joining tables

AS

MySQL supports two kinds of aliases which are known as column alias and table alias.

MySQL alias for columns
The following statement illustrates how to use the column alias:

SELECT 
 [column_1 | expression] AS descriptive_name
FROM table_name;

If the alias contains space, you must quote it as the following:

SELECT 
 [column_1 | expression] AS `descriptive name`
FROM table_name;

Because the AS keyword is optional, you can omit it in the statement.

MySQL alias for tables

table_name AS table_alias

JOIN

MySQL supports the following types of joins:

• Cross join
• Inner join
• Left join
• Right join

CROSS JOIN

The CROSS JOIN makes a Cartesian product of rows from multiple tables. Suppose, you join t1 and t2 tables using the CROSS JOIN, the result set will include the combinations of rows from the t1 table with the rows in the t2 table.

If you add a WHERE clause, in case T1 and T2 has a relationship, the CROSS JOIN works like the INNER JOIN clause as shown in the following query:

SELECT 
    *
FROM
    T1
        CROSS JOIN
    T2
WHERE
    T1.id = T2.id;

SELECT 
    *
FROM
    T1
INNER JOIN T2 ON T1.id = T2.id;

INNER JOIN

To form an INNER JOIN, you need a condition which is known as a join-predicate.

• The syntax of the INNER JOIN clause is as follows:

SELECT column_list
FROM t1
INNER JOIN t2 ON join_condition1
INNER JOIN t3 ON join_condition2
...
WHERE where_conditions;

inner-join

For each row in the t1 table, the INNER JOIN clause compares it with each row of the t2,t3 ... table to check if both of them satisfy the join condition. When the join condition is met, the INNER JOIN will return a new row which consists of columns in both t1 and t2,t3 ... tables.

LEFT JOIN

Unlike an INNER JOIN, a LEFT JOIN returns all rows in the left table including rows that satisfy join-predicate and rows do not. For the rows that do not match the join-predicate, NULLs appear in the columns of the right table in the result set.

left-join

RIGHT JOIN

A RIGHT JOIN is similar to the LEFT JOIN except that the treatment of tables is reversed. With a RIGHT JOIN, every row from the right table ( t2) will appear in the result set. For the rows in the right table that do not have the matching rows in the left table ( t1), NULLs appear for columns in the left table ( t1).

SELF JOIN

There is a special case that you need join a table to itself, which is known as self join.

Grouping data

GROUP BY

The GROUP BY clause groups a set of rows into a set of summary rows by values of columns or expressions. The GROUP BY clause returns one row for each group. In other words, it reduces the number of rows in the result set.

The following illustrates the GROUP BY clause syntax:

SELECT 
    c1, c2,..., cn, aggregate_function(ci)
FROM
    table
WHERE
    where_conditions
GROUP BY c1 , c2,...,cn;

HAVING

The HAVING clause is used in the SELECT statement to specify filter conditions for a group of rows or aggregates.

If the GROUP BY clause is omitted, the HAVING clause behaves like the WHERE clause.

Notice that the HAVING clause applies a filter condition to each group of rows, while the WHERE clause applies the filter condition to each individual row.

Reference

Basic MySQL Tutorial