SQL STATEMENTS

- Structured Query Language: SQL can be pronounced ‘Es-Que-El’ or ‘Sequel’ – both are correct and used
frequently
- SQL commands and table names are case insensitive – ‘SELECT * FROM TableName’ is the same as ‘select *
from tablename’
- Text strings within a record are case sensitive – searching for ‘North America’ is not the same as ‘north
america’

- Screenshots are from DB Browser (https://sqlitebrowser.org/).

- To run commands in DB Browser press either F5 or the Play button

ALTER

- Change the name of a table

- In DB Browser, need to close and reopen the database to see the table changes
- You cannot remove a column using ALTER. Instead, you would:
o 1) Create a new temporary table
o 2) Use INSERT to move the desired data from the original table to the new table
o 3) DROP the original table
o 4) Use ALTER to rename the temporary table

AND, OR, NOT

- Combine multiple conditions for filtering the records in your table

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AS

- Use an alias for column names

- Useful for:
o Joining tables
o When you have long table names, to avoid having to retype them
o When performing calculations on columns

AVG

- Calculate the average number in a numeric column

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BETWEEN

- Show results between two values

- Results are inclusive of the values used for the BETWEEN statement – in this example, a country with a
population of 1 million would also be returned

Comparisons

- Show results where a numerical field is greater or less than a given value

= Equal to
> Greater than
< Less than
>= Greater than or equal to
<= Less than or equal to
<> Not equal to

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COUNT

- Count the number of entries matching your query

CREATE TABLE

- Create new table

- CREATE TABLE ‘tableName’ (
‘Column01’ [DataType] [Options],
‘Column02’ [DataType] [Options]
)
- Take note of the comma separating each column, after the options
- Data Types:
o INTEGER – a positive or negative number, up to 19 digits in length
o REAL – a positive or negative decimal number, up to 19 digits in length
o TEXT – text strings
o BLOB – Binary Large Object – files, video, images, etc
- Options
o NON NULL – For each new record, this field must contain a value, cannot be left blank
o PRIMARY KEY – a unique reference ID for each record in the table. Tables don’t have to have a
primary key, but it does help with organising and joining data
o AUTOINCREMENT – a numerical field which increases by 1 when a new record is added to the table.
This is useful in creating a primary key field
o UNIQUE – This indicates that all fields in this column must have unique entries

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DELETE

- Clears the entry, or all entries & data from the table
- There is no way to reverse this. No recycle bin or Undo – backup your database before deleting it!

DROP TABLE

- Remove a table from the database

- There is no way to reverse this. No recycle bin or Undo – backup your database before deleting it!

GROUP BY

- Group records which have a common value (like continent), into summary rows
- Often used with calculation operators, like Sum, Count, etc

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IN

- Use nested SQL queries, i.e. a query within a query

- Use the results of one query, to form the WHERE statement for a second query
- The first query (the query inside the IN statement) must return only one column of data

INSERT INTO

- Insert new records into the table

- If you are inserting a value for each column in the table, you don’t need to specify the columns
- If you are only entering values for some of the columns, you need to specify those columns
- Deduplicate the data in a table by:
o Creating a new table
o Use INSERT INTO new_table SELECT DISTINCT * FROM old_table
o Delete the original table, and rename the new table back to the original table name

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JOINS: CROSS JOIN

- The least commonly used of the joins

- All entries in the first table are matched with all entries in the second table

table1 table2

A A

B B

JOINS: INNER JOIN

- The first table mentioned is treated as the LEFT table

- Results are shown only where they appear in both the left and right tables

table1 table2

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JOINS: LEFT OUTER JOIN

- Show all results from the LEFT table (the first table mentioned in your query)
- Include any matching data from the second table (the RIGHT table)

table1 table2

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LIKE

- Show results matching a text pattern

- Use % as a wildcard

LIMIT

- Limit the SELECT statement to only show a certain number of results

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MAX, MIN

- Show the highest or lowest results from a numerical field

ORDER BY

- Sort the results of a query in alphabetical or numerical order

- By default, results are ordered in ascending order

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SELECT

- Use * when you want to return all columns from the table
- To only return specific columns, specify the columns in the SELECT query

SELECT DISTINCT

- Remove duplicate values from the results of a SELECT query

- Doesn’t change the data in the database, only the results for the query

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SUM

- Add up all values in a numerical column

UPDATE

- Update an existing record in the database with a new value

- Getting the WHERE statement correct is most important - If the WHERE statement is not included, all
records in the table will be changed
- Be sure of your statement before running the command – there is no undo with SQL

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VIEWS

- A SELECT statement, stored under an easy to remember/use name. Useful for saving or storing very complex
select statements
- Read Only – Statements which modify data (DELETE, UPDATE, INSERT, …) cannot be part of a VIEW
- Create using ‘CREATE VIEW view_name AS’, then list the SQL statement
- As a virtual table, you can select all data from the VIEW, or only specific columns, data, etc. You can use
modifiers such as LIMIT, WHERE, LIKE, MAX, LIMIT, etc
- When dropping the view, take note that there is no way to reverse this. There is no recycle bin or Undo –
backup your database before deleting/changing it!

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