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The IS NULL and IS NOT NULL predicates (which use a postfix syntax) test whether data is, or is not, Null. [12] The SQL standard contains the optional feature F571 "Truth value tests" that introduces three additional logical unary operators (six in fact, if we count their negation, which is part of their syntax), also using postfix notation.
As seen in the table above, direct equality comparisons between two NULLs in SQL (e.g. NULL = NULL) return a truth value of Unknown. This is in line with the interpretation that Null does not have a value (and is not a member of any data domain) but is rather a placeholder or "mark" for missing information.
A NOT NULL constraint is functionally equivalent to the following check constraint with an IS NOT NULL predicate: CHECK (column IS NOT NULL) Some relational database management systems are able to optimize performance when the NOT NULL constraint syntax is used as opposed to the CHECK constraint syntax given above. [1]
However, if it is nullable, which is the default like all other SQL data types, it can have the special null value also. Although the SQL standard defines three literals for the BOOLEAN type – TRUE, FALSE, and UNKNOWN — it also says that the NULL BOOLEAN and UNKNOWN "may be used interchangeably to mean exactly the same thing".
Where rows in the full outer joined tables do not match, the result set will have NULL values for every column of the table that lacks a matching row. For those rows that do match, a single row will be produced in the result set (containing columns populated from both tables).
In SQL, the unique keys have a UNIQUE constraint assigned to them in order to prevent duplicates (a duplicate entry is not valid in a unique column). Alternate keys may be used like the primary key when doing a single-table select or when filtering in a where clause, but are not typically used to join multiple tables.
A table (called the referencing table) can refer to a column (or a group of columns) in another table (the referenced table) by using a foreign key. The referenced column(s) in the referenced table must be under a unique constraint, such as a primary key. Also, self-references are possible (not fully implemented in MS SQL Server though [5]).
A candidate key, or simply a key, of a relational database is any set of columns that have a unique combination of values in each row, with the additional constraint that removing any column could produce duplicate combinations of values. A candidate key is a minimal superkey, [1] i.e., a superkey that does not contain a smaller one. Therefore ...