Lecture 6 29/1/15

Number functions Number functions take numbers as input, change them, and output the results as numbers. 2

Round() This is used to round values up or down and to specify the number of decimal places. To see this, run Select round( ,2), round( ,3), round( ,1) from sys.dual; This will output ROUND( ,2) ROUND( ,3) ROUND( ,1)

Trunc() Truncating is similar to rounding. We specify therequired number of decimal places but Oracle doesn’t round up or down. It simply “chops off” extra digits. To see the difference, examine the following select round( ,2), trunc( ,2) from sys.dual; Will return ROUND( ,2) TRUNC( ,2)

Sign() This is used to show if a value is zero, positive, or negative. ™ 1 is returned if the number is positive ™ -1 is returned if the number is negative ™ 0 is returned if the number is zero i.e. select sign( ) from sys.dual will return –1. 5

CEIL() Raises the value of the number to the next highest integer. For example, Ceil( ) Returns

Floor() Lowers the value to the next lowest integer. For example Floor(123.89) Returns 123 7

Power() and others POWER Raises the number given to the power given. Power(12,2) Raises 12 to the power of 2. select power(12,2) from sys.dual; Answer: Others There are other numerical functions which Oracle can use. They are straight forward and easy to use. Other functions include SQRT (square root), ABS (absolute value), MOD (modulus), LOG (logarithmic), SIN (sine value), COS (cosine value), TAN (tangent value). There are several more. 8

Dual DUAL is a table owned by the SYS user that contains a single VARCHAR2 column called DUMMY and a single row with the value 'X' in it. This table is handy when you want to select a pseudocolumn such as SYSDATE or simply select an expression and only want to get a single row back. SQL> DESC sys.dual Name Null? Type DUMMY VARCHAR2(1) 9

More character functions

Substr This stands for substring. It returns a part of a string. We specify which part of the string we want to return. For example select substr('Diploma',2,3) from sys.dual; ipl 11

INSTR() INSTR() is used to find where characters occur in a string. For example, Instr(‘Diploma’,’o’) Would return the number 5. select instr('Diploma','oma') from sys.dual; Return????? 12

INSTR() Continued.. We can change the syntax slightly. So far we have searched for the 1st occurrence. We can also search for further occurrences. For example select instr('Seventy','e',3) from sys.dual; 14

Ltrim() Ltrim() is used to remove leading occurrences of characters. If we don’t specify a character, Oracle will remove leading spaces. For example Running ltrim(‘ Oracle’) Will remove the leading spaces. Ltrim(‘spacious’,’s’) Will return pacious (the leading s has been removed) 16

Ltrim() Continued.. select Ltrim('spacious','p') from sys.dual; Will return ???? The order specified for the leading characters is not important. For example, Ltrim(‘spacious’,’ps’) Is the same as Ltrim(‘spacious’,’sp’) select Ltrim('spacious','sp') from sys.dual; select Ltrim('spacious','ps') from sys.dual; RTRIM Is the same as LTRIM, except it trims from the right. select rtrim('spacious','su') from sys.dual; Spacio select rtrim('spacious','soui') from sys.dual; spac 19

Another Example select ltrim(emp_name, 'H') from employee; EARNE BYRNE WALSH ARTE DOHERTY MARTIN; 21

Another example SELECT LTRIM(emp_name, 'H' ) "Employee Name" FROM employee WHERE emp_name LIKE 'H%'; Employee Name EARNE ARTE 22

LPAD 23 Lpad is used to “pad” columns/strings to the left. To see this let us take the following string. Let us say that we want the string to appear as being10 characters in length. If we say that we want it to be padded to the left, it would appear like -

LPAD Continued… If we padded with ‘*’it would look like this The syntax for this would be Lpad(‘diploma’,10,’*’) Lpad the word ‘diploma’ so that it is 10 characters long, with extra spaces to the left being filled with *’s. RPAD Rpad, does the same, except that it pads to the right. What will the following command do ? Rpad (‘course’,12) 24 select Lpad('diploma',10,'*') from sys.dual; ***diploma select rpad('diploma',10,'*') from sys.dual; diploma***

Example LPAD('tech', 7);would return ' tech' LPAD('tech', 2);would return 'te' LPAD('tech', 8, '0'); would return '0000tech' LPAD('tech on the net', 15, 'z'); would return 'tech on the net' LPAD('tech on the net', 16, 'z'); would return 'ztech on the net' SELECT LPAD('Good',10,'.'), RPAD('Good',10,'.') FROM dual; GoodGood

Length() Length() returns the length of a string. For example select length('Oracle') from sys.dual; 27

Translate Translate is used to change characters. select translate('SMITH','I','O') from sys.dual; Will change all letter I’s to letter O’s in the string SMITH. select translate('HEEEEEEEEEEELP','E','A') from sys.dual; We can also specify more than 1 character to translate. select translate('HEEEEEEEEEEELP','LP','AA') from sys.dual; 28

REPLACE() Replace is similar to translate. With translate there must be a match between the number of characters to change and the number of characters to change with. I.e. we can’t replace X with TR. We can only replace 1 character with 1 character, 2 with 2, etc. With replace we can do this. For example SELECT replace(job,'ANALYST','BUSANALYST') AS NEWTITLE from EMPLOYEE; Will search the job column and replace all occurrences of ANALYST with BUSANALYST. 29