Structured Query Language (SQL)

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SQL is made up of two sub-languages

History of SQL Language

SQL 86 (ANSI, 1987 ISO)
basic relationally - complete language
bag semantics, NULLs, ordering, grouping/aggregation, outer joins

SQL-89 (minor revision)

SQL-92 (major revision)
syntactic extensions: CASE, nesting
new syntax for OUTER, JOIN

SQL 1999(major revision)
divides languages into CoreSQL + packages
CoreSQL - basically SQL-92 + recursion
some packages
object oriented
active databases (triggers, enhanced ICs)
stored procedures + external language bindings

SQL: 2003 (minor revision)
more package: XML, OLAP (windowing functions)

...SQL:2006, SQL:2008, SQL: 2011

Note:

Indexes - not part of the standard
Vendor-specific physical structures
new physical structures without modifying the standard

SQL DML: Queries

select LastName, HireDate from Employee where Salary > 100000

-operational semantics
filter out rows for which the condition is false
eliminate attributes not listed in the select clause
-result - A RELATION with
-One attribute for each expression in the select clause
-# rows <= cardinality of the specified relation

SQL is declarative (non-navigational)

Multi-sets

relational model : relations are sets
SQL standard: tables are multi-sets (a.k.a bags)
duplicate tuples may be stored
SQL queries may result in duplicates even if none of this input tables contain duplicates
select distinct used to eliminate duplicates from a query result

select distinct LastName, HireDate from Employee where Salary > 100000

SQL Query Involving Several Relations

select P.ProjNo, E.LastName from Employee E, Project P
where P.RespEmp = E.EmpNo and P.DeptNo = E21

For each project which department E21 is responsible, find the name of the employee in charge of that project

-operational semantics
form cross product
filter rows
eliminate attributes

Observations: Queries, Instances, Schema

select P.ProjNo, E.LastName from Employee E, Project P
where P.RespEmp = E.EmpNo and P.DeptNo = E21

-query -written for a particular schema, works on any instance
-schema- identifies what can be counted on
-How do I know that RespEmp values in Project will correspond to EmpNO values in Employee?
-Does the query have to worry about what to do if a Project have no responsible Employee

No, because of a foreign key constraint from RespEmp to EmpNo, and because RespEmp is defined as not NULL

The SQL Basic Query Block

select attribute-expression-list from relation-list where condition

Note
The result of such a query is a relation which has one attribute for each element of the query’s attribute-expression-lst

attribute-expression-list can contain
relation attributes
expressions involving attributes, eg salary + bonus
built in functions

the SQL basic block represented in Relational Algebra: 𝜋 … (σ … (...✕ …))

The SQL “Where” Clause

Conditions (i.e boolean valued expressions) may include
arithmetic operators: +, -, *, /
comparisons ==, <>, <, <=, >, >=
logical connectives: and , or , not

select E.LastName from Employee E, Department D. Employee M where E.WorkDept = D.DeptNo and D.MgrNo = M.EmpNO and E.Salary > M. salary

List of last names of employees who make more than their managers

Note:
Conjunctive queries: select-from-where (without or , not)

Examples:

List the identifiers of employees working on software support (E21) projects as of January 1, 2000.

select EmpNo
from Emp_Act A, Project P
where A.ProjNo = P.ProjNo
and P.DeptNo = E21
and EmStDate <= 01/01/2000
and EmEndDate <= 01/01/2000

the syntax above works in some RDBMs (relational data base management systems), however in SQL-99 datetime literals look like DATE `2000/01/01’

Does this query return duplicates?
Yes if an employee has more than one connection to E21 projects in the Emp_Act table

#Question

List the identifiers and names of department managers who are also responsible for projects “owned” by departments other than their own

select E.EmpNo, E.LastName
from Employee E, Department D, Project P
where E.EmpNo = D.MgrNo
and E.EmpNo = P.RespEmp
and D.DeptNo <> P.DeptNo

Does the query return duplicates
Yes If an employee manages multiple departments, or if he manages one but is responsible for multiple projects

The SQL “Select” Clause

Return the difference between each employee’s actual salary and a base salary of $40,000

select E.EmpNo, E.Salary - 4000 as SalaryDIff from Employee E

As above, but report zero if the actual salary is less than the base salary

select E.EmpNo,
case when E.Salary < 40000 then 0
else E.Salary - 40000 end
from Employee E

Expressions

Expression operators include
The usual arithmetic and boolean operators
other operators eg CASE, CAST, LIKE…
functions
numeric functions eg abs(), mod()
string functions e.g upper(), lower()
datetime functions, e.g current date()

expressions without explicit ’as’ clause are assigned default attribute names (integers)

SQL DML: Insertion & Deletion

insert into Employee
values (‘0350’, ‘Sheldon’, ‘Q’, ‘Jetstream’, ‘A00’ , 01/10/2000, 25000.00);

Insert a single tuple into the Employee relation

delete from Employee;

Delete all employees from the Employee table

delete from Employee
where WorkDept = ‘A00’;

Delete all employees in department A00 from the Employee table

Example

insert: statements can have an arbitrary query as input, but the schema of the result reaction must match the schema of the target reaction

insert into WellPaidEmps (EmpNo, Salary(
select EmpNo, Salary
from Employee
where Salary > 100000