SQL (cont’d) CSE3330 Spring 2014 Chengkai Li

NULL values

NULL values are all different The following query looks for employees who earn the same as their supervisors. If the database does not contain salary information of an employee and the supervisor (null values), the employee doesn’t appear in query result. (Which is what we shall expect.) SELECT E1.fname, E1.lname FROM EMPLOYEE AS E1, EMPLOYEE AS E2 WHERE E1.superssn=E2.ssn AND E1.salary= E2.salary;

Except that NULL values are all equal in UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT/DISTINCT/GROUP BY SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ( SELECT E.superssn FROM EMPLOYEE AS E, DEPARTMENT AS D WHERE E.dno=D.dnumber AND D.dname=‘research’ INTERSECT SELECT E.superssn FROM EMPLOYEE AS E, WORKS_ON AS W WHERE E.ssn=W.essn AND W.hours > 30 ) AS T; EMPLOYEE DEPARTMENT WORKS_ON ssn superssn dno dnumber dname essn proj hours NULL 1 1 research NULL 2 2 sales

Except that NULL values are all equal in UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT/DISTINCT/GROUP BY All employees with “null” salary values belong to a group. SELECT salary, COUNT(*) FROM EMPLOYEE GROUP BY salary;

Aggregation Take out null values, before aggregates are calculated. (except COUNT(*)) Suppose there are null values in “salary”. SELECT AVG(salary) FROM EMPLOYEE; is different from SELECT SUM(salary)/COUNT(*) FROM EMPLOYEE; SELECT COUNT(salary) FROM EMPLOYEE; is different from SELECT COUNT(*) FROM EMPLOYEE;

The confusing DISTINCT (at least in MySQL) SELECT a, b FROM T; a b NULL SELECT DISTINCT a, b FROM T; a b NULL SELECT COUNT (DISTINCT a, b) FROM T; COUNT (DISTINCT a, b) NULL values are all equal in DISTINCT, without COUNT. They are ignored in COUNT (DISTINCT …)

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 8 Subqueries

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 9 Subqueries A parenthesized SELECT statement (subquery) in another SELECT statement. Can be in FROM clause Can be in WHERE clause

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Subquery in FROM In place of a relation in the FROM clause, we can place another query, and then query its result. use a tuple-variable to name tuples of the result. Subquery in FROM is not mentioned in textbook, but is useful. The SQL syntax on page 140 needs revision to include subquery in FROM SELECT FROM ( SELECT... FROM … [WHERE …] [ GROUP BY … [HAVING …] ] [ORDER BY …] ) AS … [WHERE …] [ GROUP BY … [HAVING …]] [ORDER BY …] 10

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Example SELECT S.sid, S.name, R.semester, R.year FROM students AS S, ( SELECT * FROM register WHERE grade=‘A’ ) AS R WHERE S.sid=R.sid SELECT MAX(total) FROM ( SELECT sid, COUNT(*) as total FROM register GROUP BY sid ) AS R 11

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Subquery in WHERE Subqueries in WHERE are also called nested queries IN EXISTS > / = / ANY/ALL 12

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley SELECT statements embedded in other statements UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT Q4:(SELECT PNAME FROMPROJECT, DEPARTMENT, EMPLOYEE WHEREDNUM=DNUMBER AND MGRSSN=SSN AND LNAME='Smith') UNION (SELECT PNAME FROMPROJECT, WORKS_ON, EMPLOYEE WHEREPNUMBER=PNO AND ESSN=SSN AND LNAME='Smith') 13

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Correlated Subqueries Subqueries in FROM must not be correlated SELECT * FROM Dependents AS D, ( SELECT * FROM Employee AS E WHERE E.SSN=D.ESSN ) AS R Nested queries (Subqueries in WHERE) can be correlated 14

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Nested Queries can be deep SELECTPNO FROMWORKS_ON WHEREESSN IN (SELECT SSN FROMEMPLOYEE WHERELNAME=‘Smith’ AND DNO IN (SELECT DNUMBER FROMDEPARTMENT WHEREDNAME= ‘Research’) ); 15

MySQL doesn’t provide EXCEPT/MINUS and INTERSECT

A nice write-up at hing/csci4333fall2013/slides/MySQL-set- operators.pdf hing/csci4333fall2013/slides/MySQL-set- operators.pdf However, complexity due to null value is not considered. Bag semantics is not considered either.

Rewrite EXCEPT and INTERSECT SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE salary < EXCEPT SELECT essn FROM WORKS_ON WHERE hours > 30; Rewrite this query using IN, EXISTS, LEFT OUTER JOIN

Rewrite EXCEPT by IN SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE salary < EXCEPT SELECT essn FROM WORKS_ON WHERE hours > 30; SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE salary < AND ssn NOT IN (SELECT essn FROM WORKS_ON WHERE hours > 30);

Rewrite EXCEPT by EXISTS SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE salary < EXCEPT SELECT essn FROM WORKS_ON WHERE hours > 30; SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE salary < AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT essn FROM WORKS_ON WHERE hours > 30 AND essn=ssn);

Rewrite EXCEPT by LEFT OUTER JOIN SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE salary < EXCEPT SELECT essn FROM WORKS_ON WHERE hours > 30; Incorrect rewriting: SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE LEFT OUTER JOIN WORKS_ON ON ssn=essn WHERE salary < AND hours <= 30; WORKS_ON EMPLOYEE essn pno hours ssn salary

Rewrite EXCEPT by LEFT OUTER JOIN Correct rewriting: SELECT ssn FROM ((SELECT ssn FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE salary < 10000) AS R LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT essn FROM WORKS_ON WHERE hours > 30) AS T ON R.ssn=T.essn) WHERE T.essn IS NULL; WORKS_ON EMPLOYEE R T R left outer join T essn pno hours ssn salary ssn essn ssn essn