SQL AND OR in WHERE query Commands and statements

SQL AND OR statement can be used with WHERE clause to list a set of records with
matching combination of a table. We can use AND OR SQL in query with NOT
combinationalso to filter out some records. This is our table

id name class mark

1 John Deo Four 75

2 Max Ruin Three 85

3 Arnold Three 55

4 Krish Star Four 60

5 John Mike Four 60

6 Alex John Four 55

7 My John Rob Fifth 78

We will apply AND command to display records of class Four with more than 70
mark.

SELECT * FROM student WHERE class='Four' AND mark >70

id name class mark

1 John Deo Four 75

WE can see the record returned is class= Four and mark is more than 70. Here both
the conditions are satisfied.

SELECT * FROM student WHERE class='Four' OR mark >70

id name class mark

1 John Deo Four 75

2 Max Ruin Three 85

4 Krish Star Four 60

5 John Mike Four 60

6 Alex John Four 55

7 My John Rob Fifth 78

Here the records returned are either belongs to class Four OR having mark more
than 70. Any one of the two condition is to be satisfied.

SQL AVG Command

AVG sql command is used to find out average value of a numeric field in a table. Now let us apply this AVG
command to this table and find out the average mark obtain by all the students. The AVG command will
calculate the average value of all the marks

idname class mark

1John Deo Four 75
2Max Ruin Three 85
3Arnold Three 55
4Krish Star Four 60
5John Mike Four 60
6Alex John Four 55
Same way we can get the minimum value of a range of records by using SQL MIN command. Also check
up SQL MAX command to get highest value of data
We will apply the AVG command here like this to the field mark

SELECT avg( mark ) FROM `student`

avg(mark)
65.0000
The command will calculate average value of marks considering all the marks of the table. We can define
some header like this also.
SELECT AVG(mark) as avg_mark FROM `student`
avg_mark
65.0000
Here we can use the Group By command to find out the average mark obtained by each classes.
Related Tutorial
• SQL Group by
• MySQL Max
• MySQL Min
• MySQL Sum
• Copy data to new table
• SQL Left Join

SELECT class, avg( mark ) as avg_mark FROM `student` GROUP BY class

class avg_mark
Four 62.5000
Three 70.0000
Please see the SQL SUM command to know the details on uses of GROUP BY command and the
precautions.
We can add condition to the sql command to get our desired result. We can add one Where clause to the
query to consider records for which mark is more than some value ( say 55 )

SELECT avg( mark ) as avg_mark, class FROM student where mark > 55 GROUP BY class

avg_mark class
65.0000Four
85.0000Three

SQL ALTER Command

Table structure can be changed by using alter command. With this command Field type or property can
be changed or a new field can be added. This sql alter table command is used like create table
command

Please note that while changing the structure we must honor the existing constraints of the table. For
example if you decide to change a field to UNIQUE so it will not accept any duplicate records then if
some records with duplicate value are already there then system will not allow this and we will get error
message.
Same way we have to take care of other constraints

Here is the existing table structure.

Field Type Attributes Null Default Extra

id int(2) No auto_increment

name varchar(50) No
class varchar(10) No
mark int(3) No 0

We will apply our alter table command to this table. We will change field name mark to student_mark
Here is the command

ALTER TABLE `student3` CHANGE `mark` `student_mark` INT( 3 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL
With this alter table command the the field name mark will change to student_mark. This way we are
changing a field name only. Same way field type, default value and other properties of the field can be
changed. The new table structure is listed below.

Field Type Attributes Null Default Extra

id int(2) No auto_increment

name varchar(50) No
class varchar(10) No
student_mark int(3) No 0

Adding / Altering a numeric field to auto increment field

You can read purpose and how to create auto increment field here. We can convert one existing numeric
field to an auto increment field in two steps. First making the filed unique and then altering the field to
add auto increment property to it. We will start with making it unique

Declaring an numeric filed to be unique

$q="ALTER TABLE `message_table` ADD UNIQUE (`msg_id`)";

Here in the message_table we already have one numeric filed msg_id and we have made it to UNIQUE
field so no duplicate data is allowed, if any duplicate data is there then we will receive error message.

Now let us change it to add auto increment property to it.

$q="ALTER TABLE `message_table` CHANGE `msg_id` `msg_id` INT( 4 ) NOT NULL

AUTO_INCREMENT ";

SQL BETWEEN Command to fetch records from a range

Many times we may require to find out records between a range of value. We can specify one upper limit
and one lower limit and the query should return all the records between these two values. The sql
BETWEEN command will give us the required result in all these cases. We will apply here BETWEEN
command to a numeric field and see how the records are returned from a Mysql table. Here is our table.

idname class mark

1John Deo Four 75
2Max Ruin Three 85
3Arnold Three 55
4Krish Star Four 60
5John Mike Four 60
6Alex John Four 55
On this table we will apply our BETWEEN command to get all the records within some upper and lower
limits. Say our upper limit is 75 and lower limit is 60. So we will get all the records within these limits and
please note that limit 60 and 75 both are inclusive. Here is our sql BETWEEN command.

SELECT * FROM `student` WHERE mark BETWEEN 60 and 75

id name class mark

1John Deo Four 75
4Krish Star Four 60
5John Mike Four 60
You can see we have all the records between 60 and 75 ( both inclusive). Please note that we have to first
start with lower limit and then upper limit. So the records between 60 and 75 will be displayed ( NOT
BETWEEN 75 and 60 )

SQL COUNT Command

We can count the number of records in a table with different combinations. Let us first count the total
number of records in the table with this count command.

SELECT count( * ) as total_record FROM student

This will display total records under the name total_record in the table student. Now we can add some
condition to this SQL to count the records with different conditions. Let us find out the number of students
in class Four in out table.

SELECT count( * ) as total_record FROM `student` WHERE class = 'four'

 Related Tutorial
• SQL Group by
• MySQL Max
• MySQL Average
• MySQL Sum
• Copy data to new table
• SQL Left Join

This will return the count of students in class four only. Here since we are displaying only one count for a
fixed class so we can use this way. We may require to display total of each class in a table so here we have
to use GROUP BY clause to display totals of all the tables

SQL COPY TABLE Command

For backup and other requirements we often have to copy the data of a table or copy the total table
structure with data. We can selectively copy the data of a MySQL table to a new table or copy the total data
to a new table. We will learn here different techniques on how to do this.

We can copy a table structure and records to another new table. The CREATE TABLE command will create a
table with same structure of the old table and add all the records. To export data to an existing table you can
use insert command.

CREATE TABLE student2 SELECT * FROM student

This will create a new table class2 using the structure of the table class and will copy all the records from
table class to our new table class2.

This became more useful when we add conditions to this by using SQL WHERE command. This way
selectively we can transfer records to a new table. This is our table.
id name class mark
1 John Deo Four 75

2 Max Ruin Three 85

3 Arnold Three 55

4 Krish Star Four 60

5 John Mike Four 60

6 Alex John Four 55

We will apply our sql command to this table to create a new table and we will copy records for which class =
Four. So our new table will contain the records of class four only.
CREATE TABLE student2 SELECT * FROM student WHERE class='Four'

Related Tutorial
• Exporting data to table
• SQL Inner Join
• Number of Affected rows
• SQL Rename table
• PHP MySQL functions

With this command we will create a new table student2 of same structure of main table student and all the
records of class = Four will be copied to the new table. The new table student2 will have these records

id name class mark

1 John Deo Four 75

4 Krish Star Four 60

5 John Mike Four 60

6 Alex John Four 55

This way we can use any conditional requirements by using where clause to create or copy different tables.

Create table if not exists

Note that all the above quires will return error if the table is already exist, so to prevent this error message
we can add the command IF NOT EXISTS to the query.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS student5 SELECT * FROM student WHERE class='Four'

Here the table will be created only if the table is not there before.

What we will do if we want to delete the old table and create a new table ?

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS

Some time we may not be sure if the table exists or not so we can drop the table if exist by adding one more
query before creating the table. Here it is

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `student5`;

The advantage of the above command over using a simple drop table command is here no error message
saying unknown table is generated even if the table is not there.

Creating tables by query

We can create new table by using sql. We have seen how to execute a query and get the records or modify
the records in MySQL. Same way we can run one sql command to create tables. This can be a part of a script
where based on the logic of the script we can design a table and create it.
We will start with simple create query for creating a new table.

$q="CREATE TABLE `sample_tb` (`empno` VARCHAR( 6 ) NOT NULL) ";

The above query will create a table sample_tb and add one column empno to it. But note that we have to
execute the above code. After execution we can find out whether the query has successfully executed or not
by using one if condition. If the query is not executed successfully then we will print the error message. If
table create process is successful then we will display a success message. Here is the code

$q="CREATE TABLE `sample_tb` (`empno` VARCHAR( 6 ) NOT NULL) ";

$q1=mysql_query($q);
if($q1){echo "created table sample_tb....<br>";}
else{echo mysql_error();}

As you can see we have created the table, with one column to store the data. Now what happens if the table
sample_tb already exists and we will try to create again? The system will generate an error message. So
before trying to create the table we will delete the table and then create again. ( Note: do this if your
requirement is there ). We also can't delete the table without checking the table is there or not. So we will
use one if exists command like this.

$q="DROP table if exists sample_tb";

$q1=mysql_query($q);
if($q1){echo "deleted the table sample_tb....<br>";}
else{echo mysql_error();}

We can easily execute the create table query to generate the table. Note that this combination is used inside
many scripts where temporary tables are create and deleted at the end.

SQL delete Command

Delete query is used to delete records from the table. This query is used along with some condition to
selectively delete records from the table. To delete all the records from the table we can use truncate
command like this

TRUNCATE `student`

This will remove all the records from the table. This is one way of deleting all the records from a table. Now
let us try to delete records based on some selection. Now let us delete records of the students who has got
mark less than 60. Here we are selectively deleting the records so we have to use WHERE clause to match
the selection.
Related Tutorial
• Number of Affected rows
• Copy data to new table
• SQL Left Join
• SQL Rename table
• PHP MySQL functions
DELETE FROM student WHERE mark < 60

This will delete records for which mark is less than 60. We can use all the WHERE clause we learned at SQL
WHERE page.
How to delete tabel or database ?

SQL DROP to remove table

We have seen how to remove records from a table by using truncate sql command. Now we will learn how to
use DROP query command to delete a table or a field or some other properties associated with the table. Let
us start with deleting a field by DROP command.

ALTER TABLE `content` DROP `dt`;

Here content is our table name and dt is one of the field of this table. By this command we can delete the
field dt of the table content.

Deleting a Table
We can use DROP command to remove a table inside the database. Now here is the code to delete the table
content.

DROP table content

Deleting multiple tables

We can use drop command to delete more than one table. Here is the command to remove 4 tables.

DROP TABLE `content`, `content_admin`, `content_cat`, `content_cmt_post`;

The above command will delete four tables.

Dropping a unique constraints

We can use DROP sql command to remove unique constraints associated to any column, here is an example.

ALTER TABLE 'content_cat' DROP INDEX 'cat_id'

The above command will remove the unique index associated with cat_id field of content_cat table
We can also use DROP command to delete a complete database. Here is the sample code

DROP DATABASE TEST

SQL DISTINCT Command
DISTINCT command in SQL collects the unique or distinct records from a field of a table. In the student
table we are interested to know how many class records are there and the DISTINCT sql command should
return class once only. So if class five is there ten times then it should return once and if class six one
record is there then class six should return once.

So using DISTINCT sql command we can avoid duplicate records in SELECT query

There is another related command sql group by which groups the data and brings the unique names. This
group by command is usually used along with count, average, minimum, maximum commands. Here we
will discuss sql distinct command only

DISTINCT command will return records once only.

SELECT DISTINCT class FROM student

This is our table and we will apply DISTINCT command to this table.
idname class mark Related Tutorial
• Group by
1John Deo Four 75 • SQL Maximum value
2Max Ruin Three 85 • SQL Average
3Arnold Three 55 • SQL Rename table
4Krish Star Four 60 • PHP MySQL functions
5John Mike Four 60
6Alex John Four 55

Here again the DISTINCT command in SQL

SELECT DISTINCT class FROM `student`
The output is displayed here
class
Four
Three
As you can see only two rows are returned and they are the distinct class in the table

SQL GROUP BY Command

You can see the Count command before using GROUP BY command here. GROUP BY command will create
groups in the field name specified and will count the number of records in the groups. This is very useful
command.

We can also use WHERE command along with GROUP BY command in Mysql tables.

SELECT count(*) as total_records, class FROM `student` group by class

This will display the total records in each class. Like this

total_records class

1 Eight
 3 Five

9 Four

2 Nine

10 Seven

7 Six

3 Three
Let us try to get the total number of girls records in each class by using GROUP BY query. Here we want to
filter our query for only girls so we have to use one WHERE clause to restrict the records using the sex
field. Here is the query.

Related Tutorial
• Copy data to new table
• SQL Left Join
• Number of Affected rows
• SQL Rename table
• PHP MySQL functions

SELECT count( * ) AS total_records, class FROM `student` WHERE sex='female' GROUP BY class

The output is here

total_records class

5 Four

1 Nine

5 Seven

5 Six

1 Three

SQL HAVING command used with GROUP BY Command

Please read basic of group by command Part I

We can use sql having command to add condition to the query. The advantage of using HAVING command
is it can be used in aggregate functions like count, max etc. We can't use SQL WHERE clause here. This
way we can add value to our select command as per requirement. Usually SQL HAVING command is used
in conjunction with group by command. Please read the sql group by command and SQL sub group by
command to know more about grouping the records.

Here is the full table with all the rows. On this we will apply the group by query
d_id name type category price stock
 1Book1 Book Management 220 10
2Book2 CD Management 120 8
3Book3 Report Management 25 4
4Book4 Book Management 55 8
5Document1 Book Management 15 23
6Document2 CD Computers 80 45
7Document3 Report Computers 55 65
8Book5 Report Management 80 10
9Document4 CD Management 72 5
10Book 8 Book Computers 88 6
11Book 9 CD Computers 100 5
12Document5 Report Computers 85 8
13Book 10 Book Computers 150 5
Here is the SQL having command with group by command applied on the above table.

SELECT category, type , count( * ) as total FROM `documents` GROUP BY category, type
HAVING total < 3

This will display the total records in each group and sub group. Like this
category type total Related Tutorial
• SQL Group by
Computers Book 2 • Copy data to new table
Computers CD 2 • SQL Left Join
Computers Report 2 • SQL count
Management CD 2 • PHP MySQL functions
Management Report 2

Without the HAVING command you will get a result records like this below.

SELECT category,type, count(*) as total FROM `documents` group by category,type

This will display the total records in each group and sub group. Like this
category type total
Computers Book 2
Computers CD 2
Computers Report 2
Management Book 3
Management CD 2
Management Report 2

SQL INSERT Command

INSERT command is used to append or add a record to a database. A new record will be added at the end
of the table every time INSERT command is used. We have to specify what are the fields to be filled while
inserting the record, we can add records even without specifying the field names but we have to maintain
the order of the filed existed in the table and the the order of the data we are inserting. We have to take
care of proper formatting of the data we are inserting to the table. We can't insert a string to a numeric
field. So we have to format the data and apply the insert command. Here is one example of insert
command.

INSERT INTO table_name(field1,field2,field3,field4) values('value1','value2','value3','value4')

Here the order of the fields need not be same as order in our MySQL table but the order we are specifying
by saying the filed names, that order we must maintain for values. We have to take care of the fields
where we have given NOT NULL or any other such requirements. Any violation of the field structure will
generate an error message.

Note that it is always a good practice to use filed name and value pairs while inserting records. If we
specify only the value by maintaining the order of the fields there will be problem in future once a new field
is added or removed from the table. So always write the query specifying field names and its values.

Here are some sql commands that will create a table and then add three records to it by using insert
command.
CREATE TABLE t1 (id int(11) NOT NULL default '0',name1 varchar(10) NOT NULL default '')
TYPE=MyISAM;
Related Tutorial
• SQL Insert using SET option
• SQL Select Query
• Copy data to new table
• SQL Left Join

Adding records to the table t1

INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (1, 'one1');

INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (2, 'two1');
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (3, 'three1');

SQL INNER join query for MySQL

INNER join SQL command is mostly used to join one table to it self. The biggest advantage of doing this is
to get linking information from the same table. We will try to understand this with an example. The best
example of INNER join will be employee table where we will keep the employee and its manager as a
single record. This way by linking to the table it self we will generate a report displaying it as two linked
tables. Each record will have one additional field storing the data of the manager by keeping the employee
ID and we will use M_ID ( manager ID ) to link with main employee ID. This way we will link two virtual
tables generated from one main table. Here is the table. You can download /copy the sql dump file to
create your own MySQL table for testing.

Main table Managers Table Employee table

id name m id emp_na id emp_na
_id me me
1 John 2 2 Greek Tor 1 John

2 Greek Tor 1 1 John 2 Greek Tor

3 Alex John 1 1 John 3 Alex John

4 Mike tour 1 1 John 4 Mike tour

5 Brain J 3 3 Alex John 5 Brain J

6 Ronald 3 3 Alex John 6 Ronald

7 Kin 4 4 Mike tour 7 Kin

8 Herod 3 3 Alex John 8 Herod

9 Alen 2 2 Greek Tor 9 Alen

10 Ronne 1 1 John 10 Ronne

In the table you can see every record has one manager id field known as m_id. We have used the unique
id of the employee in the m_id field to mark who is the manager for the employee.
To generate the manager table we have used this SQL
SELECT t1.id,t1.name as emp_name from emp as t1 INNER JOIN emp as t2 on t1.id=t2.m_id

To generate the employee table we have used this SQL

SELECT t1.id,t1.name as emp_name from emp as t1 INNER JOIN emp as t2 on t2.id=t1.m_id

Now let us use inner join to create one report on who is the manager of which employee. Check this SQL
SELECT t1.id, t1.name as emp_name, t2.name as manager FROM emp as t1 INNER JOIN emp as
t2 on t2.id = t1.m_id

id emp_na manager Related Tutorial

• MySQL Left Join
me
• SQL select
1 John Greek Tor
• Number of Affected rows
2 Greek Tor John

3 Alex John John

4 Mike tour John

5 Brain J Alex John

6 Ronald Alex John

7 Kin Mike tour

8 Herod Alex John

9 Alen Greek Tor

10 Ronne John

CREATE TABLE `emp` (

`id` int(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`name` varchar(25) NOT NULL default '',
`m_id` int(4) NOT NULL default '0',
UNIQUE KEY `id` (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=11 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=11 ;

--
-- Dumping data for table `emp`
--
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (1, 'John', 2);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (2, 'Greek Tor', 1);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (3, 'Alex John', 1);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (4, 'Mike tour', 1);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (5, 'Brain J', 3);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (6, 'Ronald', 3);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (7, 'Kin', 4);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (8, 'Herod', 3);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (9, 'Alen', 2);
INSERT INTO `emp` VALUES (10, 'Ronne', 1);

SQL IN query Command and statements

SQL IN statement can be used with where clause to list a set of matching records of a table. We can use
SQL in query with NOT combination also to filter out some records. This is our table

id name class mark

1John Deo Four 75
2Max Ruin Three 85
3Arnold Three 55
4Krish Star Four 60
5John Mike Four 60
6Alex John Four 55
7My John Rob Fifth 78
We will apply in command to display records of class Four and Fifth only.

SELECT * FROM `student` WHERE class IN ('Four','fifth')

id name class mark

1John Deo Four 75
4Krish Star Four 60
5John Mike Four 60
6Alex John Four 55
7My John Rob Fifth 78
Here above the sql in query returns the records of class Four and Fifth only. We can apply NOT IN sql
query also like below to remove some records in display.

SELECT * FROM `student` WHERE class not IN ('Four','fifth')

id name class mark

2Max Ruin Three 85
3Arnold Three 55
We can link or collect data related to two different tables by using IN command. For example we have
another sports table where we have the list of students joined in sports. We need not keep all the columns
lime name , class etc. We can only keep the id filed. So our student can be collected from main table. Here
is the query which will display only students joined in sports

Select * from student where id in ( select * from student_sports)

SQL left join query

We can link more than one table to get the records in different combinations as per requirement. Keeping
data of one area in one table and linking them each other with key field is better way of designing tables
than creating single table with more number of fields. For example in a student database you can keep
student contact details in one table and its performance report in another table. You can link these two
tables by using on unique student identification number.

Here are two tables with some data. We will apply first sql where command to this table

Table one ( t1 ) Table two ( t2)

id name1 id name2
1one1 1one1
2two1 2two2
3three1 4four2

SELECT t1.id,t1.name1 FROM `t1`,t2 WHERE t1.id=t2.id

The output of the above sql command will give records of MySQL table t1 for which there is a record
present in table t2 and linking is done by id field.

i n
d ame
1
1one1
2two1
We can display all the records of table t1 along with the (matching ) records of t2 if matching is found by
linking them in ID field. Here is the left join sql to display this and below that the output is listed.

SELECT t1.id, name1, t2.id, t2.name2 FROM t1 left join t2 on t1.id = t2.id

i n id n
d ame ame
1 2
1one1 1one1
2two1 2two2
 3three1 NULLNULL
The above result shows a simple left join and its output. We may be interested to identify the the records
in table t1 for which there is no record present in table t2. Here we have to use left join and link the tables
by id field. Here is the query using left join and the out put is below that.

SELECT t1.id, name1 FROM t1 left join t2 on t1.id = t2.id where ISNULL(t2.id)

for MySQL 5 and above try like this

SELECT t1.id, name1 FROM t1 left join t2 on t1.id = t2.id where (t2.id) is null

i n
d ame
1
3three1
In the above result we have seen how the output works when we have to get records which are not
present in other table. Now let us find out the other way , we will get the record of table one for which
matching record exists in table 2. Here is the left join sql and below that the results of the query.

SELECT t1.id,name1,t2.id,t2.name2 FROM t1 left join t2 on t1.id = t2.id where NOT ISNULL(
t2.id )

for MySQL 5 try like this

SELECT t1.id,name1,t2.id,t2.name2 FROM t1 left join t2 on t1.id = t2.id where ( t2.id ) NOT is
null

i n i n
d ame d ame
1 2
1one1 1one1
2two1 2two2

SQL Limit query for a range of records in MySQL table

We may require to display some part of the records returned by a query specifying a range. What is the
range to be returned we can specify by saying the starting and ending record number. We will pass this
starting and ending number along with the SQL LIMIT command to restrict the records within that range.
We will see the syntax of this query in our student MySQL table.

SELECT * FROM `student` LIMIT 0, 10

We have specified here to return 10 records starting from 0 or from the first record. Same way we can ask
for 10 records starting from 20th record like this
SELECT * FROM `student` LIMIT 20, 10

This will return 10 records from 21st record. That is from 21st record to 30th record. Here is the output

id name clas m Related Tutorial

• PHP paging
s ark
• Copy data to new table
2Babby Four 69
• SQL Left Join
1John • SQL Rename table
2Reggid Seve 55 • PHP MySQL functions
2 n
2Herod Eigh 79
3 t
2Tiddy Seve 78
4Now n
2Giff Tow Seve 88
5 n
2Crelea Seve 79
6 n
2Big Nose Thre 81
7 e
2Rojj Base Seve 86
8 n
2Tess Seve 55
9Played n
3Reppy Six 79
0Red

This is quite useful for designing paging in any script. Paging is known as displaying records in page wise
with fixed number of records per page. There will be navigational menu to move between any pages and
go to next and previous pages. The best example of php paging is the way google display search results. It
display an easy navigational menu at the bottom of each search result page to go to next or previous page
or any other page.

Note that this is returning number of records and this has no connection with the id number field used
here. If the ID numbers are different then also the query will return 10 records starting from 21 record
( irrespective of the ID numbers ). If you want records with particular ID range specified then you have to
use sql between command.

SQL LOCATE command to search strings in fields

We can use the LOCATE string command in our SQL to get the position of a string present inside another
string. Let us try this command.
select locate('xy',afghytyxyrt)
 This query will return 8 as the searched string is located at the 8th position within the string. Now let us
apply this LOCATE command to search for the presence of the name john in the name field (column ) of
our student table.
SELECT * FROM `student` WHERE locate( 'john', name )

The output of this query is here.

name class mark sex
John Deo Four5 75 male
John Mike Four5 60 male
Alex John Four5 55 male
My John Rob Fifth5 78 male
Big John Four5 55 male
Babby John Four5 69 male
As you can see we have collected all the records having 'john' in any place in the name column of the
student table.

Now let us apply this Locate query to our student table to search for the location of the string 'john'

SELECT locate('john',name) as position,name FROM `student`

The above command will return all the records of with the position of the searched string, if it is not found
then 0 is returned.

SQL MAX Command

Some time we will be searching for the maximum value in a field of any MySql table. MAX sql command will
return the record with maximum or highest value in the SQL table. Same way we can get the minimum
value of a range of records by using SQL MIN command

What happen if we apply MAX command to a non numeric field? We will get the record with highest alphabet.
But the best way to use MAX command is to apply it in a numeric field.

id name class mark

1 John Deo Four 75

2 Max Ruin Three 85

3 Arnold Three 55

4 Krish Star Four 60

5 John Mike Four 60

6 Alex John Four 55

We will apply the MAX command here like this to the field mark

SELECT max( mark ) FROM `student`

max(mark)
85
The command collected the maximum value of the mark field and displayed. We can define some header like
this also.

SELECT MAX(mark) as max_mark FROM `student`

max_mark
85
To display all fields like name, class, id along with the highest mark we can use like this. This will display one
record with all details of the highest mark

SELECT id,name,class,MAX(mark) as max_mark FROM `student`

id name class max_mark

2 Max Ruin Three 85
We can get same output by using where clause by matching with maximum mark

SELECT * FROM `student` WHERE mark=(select max(mark) from student)

Using Group By
Now let us find out what is the maximum mark ( or highest ) in each class. Here we can use the Group By
command to find out the maximum mark obtained by each class

SELECT class, max( mark ) as max_mark FROM `student` GROUP BY class

class max_mark
Four 75

Three 85

You can see above that maximum mark of each class is displayed. Since we have two class in our table so
the sql command has returned two class with highest mark in each of them. We have to use Group By clause
if we ask for the query to return any other field name other than the max. Otherwise system will generate
error.

Related Tutorial
• MySQL Min
• MySQL Avg
• MySQL Sum

We can add condition to the sql command to get our desired result. We can add one Where clause to the
query to consider records for a perticular class only ( say Four)
SELECT max( mark ) as maximu_mark, class FROM student where class ='Four' GROUP BY class
max_mark class
75 Four