Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In SQL, null or NULL is a special marker used to indicate that a data value does not exist in the database. Introduced by the creator of the relational database model, E. F. Codd , SQL null serves to fulfill the requirement that all true relational database management systems ( RDBMS ) support a representation of "missing information and ...
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. However, the principle that two Nulls aren't equal to each other is effectively violated in the SQL specification for the UNION and INTERSECT operators, which do identify ...
Meanwhile, COALESCE simplifies the process of handling NULL values by returning the first non-NULL value in a given list of expressions, which is especially useful in scenarios where data might be incomplete or missing. Furthermore, SQL's support for three-valued logic (True, False, Unknown) introduces nuances when handling NULL values in ...
For example, in a table containing products, one could add a check constraint such that the price of a product and quantity of a product is a non-negative value: price >= 0 quantity >= 0 If these constraints were not in place, it would be possible to have a negative price (−$30) or quantity (−3 items).
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.
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".
SQL was initially developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce after learning about the relational model from Edgar F. Codd [12] in the early 1970s. [13] This version, initially called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language), was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original quasirelational database management system, System R, which a group at IBM San ...
Common aggregate functions include: Average (i.e., arithmetic mean) Count; Maximum; Median; Minimum; Mode; Range; Sum; Others include: Nanmean (mean ignoring NaN values, also known as "nil" or "null") Stddev; Formally, an aggregate function takes as input a set, a multiset (bag), or a list from some input domain I and outputs an element of an ...