The SQL Server CASE statement evaluates a list of conditions and returns one of multiple possible result expressions.
Although it’s commonly known as the “CASE statement”, the SQL Server documentation lists it as an expression. Plus it’s referred to as the “CASE expression” in the SQL standard. Some other DBMSs distinguish between the CASE statement and the CASE expression. Either way, here’s a quick rundown on how the “CASE statement” (or CASE expression) works in SQL Server.
Some DBMSs have an NVL2() function that allows us to replace a value with another value, the new value being determined by whether or not the initial value is null.
It’s similar to the NVL() function, except that NVL2() accepts exactly three arguments. This allows us to specify a different value to return in the event the first argument is not null.
In contrast, with the NVL() function, some DBMSs accept only two arguments (which makes the function a synonym for the IFNULL() function) while others accept an unlimited number of arguments (which makes it a synonym for the COALESCE() function).
Here are examples of using SQL to return duplicate rows when those rows have a primary key or other unique identifier column.
These queries work in most of the major RDBMSs, including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.
In SQLite, we can use the DATE() function to add one or more years to a date.
For datetime values, we can use the DATETIME() function.
A generated column is one whose value is derived from an expression, as opposed to a fixed value. The expression typically uses other columns in the same table to compute the derived value.
We can create a generated column in MySQL very easily. But what if we want to go back later and see its definition?
Here are two options for returning the definition of a generated column in MySQL.
Here are examples of converting a Unix timestamp to a date/time value in some of the major RDBMSs.
The Unix timestamp (also known as Unix Epoch time, Unix time, or POSIX time) is the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Thursday, 1 January 1970, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).