In PostgreSQL, you can use the IF NOT EXISTS clause of the CREATE TABLE statement to check whether or not a table of the same name already exists in the database before creating it.
The table will only be created if no other table exists with the same name. If a table already exists with that name, a “notice” will be issued instead of an error.
Continue readingMost of the major DBMSs provide us with a way to find a string within a string using SQL. By this, I mean use a SQL query to find the position of a substring within a string.
There are several SQL functions that allow us to do this, including INSTR(), LOCATE(), POSITION(), and CHARINDEX(). The function you use will depend on your DBMS, and possibly whether or not you need to specify a starting position.
In MySQL, you can use the IF NOT EXISTS clause of the CREATE TABLE statement to check whether or not a table of the same name already exists in the database.
If the table doesn’t exist, it will be created. If it already exists, it won’t be created.
Continue readingMost major RDBMSs provide ways for us to format numbers using SQL. Some provide only basic formatting capabilities, while others are more advanced.
Below are examples of formatting a number in some of the more popular RDBMSs.
Continue readingHere are five ways to check whether or not a table exists in a MySQL database.
Continue readingIn Postgres, we can use the STRING_AGG() function to transform our query results into a comma separated list.
Instead of each value being output in a separate row (as with any regular query), the values are output to a single row, separated by a comma (or some other delimiter of our choosing).
Continue readingMariaDB includes a RAND() function that returns a random number. More precisely, it returns a DOUBLE precision floating point value v in the range 0 <= v < 1.0.
This is great, but what if you want to generate an integer within a larger range – and a range that you specify?
Fortunately, there’s an easy technique for doing this.
Continue readingIf you get the “operator does not exist: integer || integer” error in PostgreSQL, it’s probably because you’re trying to concatenate two numbers.
If you really want to concatenate two numbers, the easiest way to overcome this issue is to cast at least one of them to a string data type first.
Another way to do it is to use the CONCAT() function.
Below are two options for returning a full list of stored procedures in MySQL.
Continue readingWhen using SQLcl with Oracle Database, you can set SQLFORMAT to insert in order to output the query results as INSERT statements.