SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

SQL, or Structured Query Language, is a language to talk to databases. It

allows you to select specific data and to build complex reports. Today, SQL
is a universal language of data. It is used in practically all technologies that
process data.

CONTENTS
QUERYING SINGLE TABLE 3
COLUMN & TABLE ALIASES 3
FILTERING THE OUTPUT 4
COMPARISON OPERATORS 4
TEXT OPERATORS 4
OTHER OPERATORS 5
QUERYING MULTIPLE TABLES 6
INNER JOIN 6
LEFT JOIN 6
RIGHT JOIN 7
FULL JOIN 7
CROSS JOIN 8
NATURAL JOIN 8
AGGREGATION AND GROUPING 9
SUBQUERIES 11
CORRELATED SUBQUERIES 12
SET OPERATIONS: UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT 13

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SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

SAMPLE DATA
COUNTRY
id name population area
1 France 66600000 640680
2 Germany 80700000 357000
... ... ... ...
CITY
id name country_id population rating
1 Paris 1 2243000 5
2 Berlin 2 3460000 3
... ... ... ... ...

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SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

QUERYING SINGLE TABLE

Fetch all columns from the country table:
SELECT *
FROM country;

Fetch id and name columns from the city table:

SELECT id, name
FROM city;

Fetch city names sorted by the rating column in the default ASCending
order:
SELECT name
FROM city
ORDER BY rating [ASC];

Fetch city names sorted by the rating column in the DESCending order:
SELECT name
FROM city
ORDER BY rating DESC;

ALIASES
COLUMNS
SELECT name AS city_name
FROM city;

TABLES
SELECT co.name, ci.name
FROM city AS ci
JOIN country AS co
ON ci.country_id = co.id;

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FILTERING THE OUTPUT

COMPARISON OPERATORS
Fetch names of cities that have a rating above 3:
SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE rating > 3;

Fetch names of cities that are neither Berlin nor Madrid:

SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE name != 'Berlin'
AND name != 'Madrid';

TEXT OPERATORS
Fetch names of cities that start with a 'P' or end with an 's':
SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE name LIKE 'P%'
OR name LIKE '%s';

Fetch names of cities that start with any letter followed by 'ublin' (like
Dublin in Ireland or Lublin in Poland):
SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE name LIKE '_ublin';

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OTHER OPERATORS
Fetch names of cities that have a population between 500K and 5M:
SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE population BETWEEN 500000 AND 5000000;

Fetch names of cities that don't miss a rating value:

SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE rating IS NOT NULL;

Fetch names of cities that are in countries with IDs 1, 4, 7, or 8:

SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE country_id IN (1, 4, 7, 8);

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SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

QUERYING MULTIPLE TABLES

INNER JOIN
JOIN (or explicitly INNER JOIN) returns rows that have matching values
in both tables.
SELECT city.name, country.name
FROM city
[INNER] JOIN country
ON city.country_id = country.id;
CITY COUNTRY
id name country_id id name
1 Paris 1 1 France
2 Berlin 2 2 Germany
3 Warsaw 4 3 Iceland

LEFT JOIN
LEFT JOIN returns all rows from the left table with corresponding rows
from the right table. If there's no matching row, NULLs are returned as
values from the second table.
SELECT city.name, country.name
FROM city
LEFT JOIN country
ON city.country_id = country.id;
CITY COUNTRY
id name country_id id name
1 Paris 1 1 France
2 Berlin 2 2 Germany
3 Warsaw 4 NULL NULL

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SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

RIGHT JOIN
RIGHT JOIN returns all rows from the right table with corresponding
rows from the left table. If there's no matching row, NULLs are returned as
values from the left table.
SELECT city.name, country.name
FROM city
RIGHT JOIN country
ON city.country_id = country.id;
CITY COUNTRY
id name country_id id name
1 Paris 1 1 France
2 Berlin 2 2 Germany
NULL NULL NULL 3 Iceland

FULL JOIN
FULL JOIN (or explicitly FULL OUTER JOIN) returns all rows from
both tables – if there's no matching row in the second table, NULLs are
returned.
SELECT city.name, country.name
FROM city
FULL [OUTER] JOIN country
ON city.country_id = country.id;
CITY COUNTRY
id name country_id id name
1 Paris 1 1 France
2 Berlin 2 2 Germany
3 Warsaw 4 NULL NULL
NULL NULL NULL 3 Iceland

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SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

CROSS JOIN
CROSS JOIN returns all possible combinations of rows from both tables.
There are two syntaxes available.
SELECT city.name, country.name
FROM city
CROSS JOIN country;

SELECT city.name, country.name

FROM city, country;
CITY COUNTRY
id name country_id id name
1 Paris 1 1 France
1 Paris 1 2 Germany
2 Berlin 2 1 France
2 Berlin 2 2 Germany

NATURAL JOIN
NATURAL JOIN will join tables by all columns with the same name.
SELECT city.name, country.name
FROM city
NATURAL JOIN country;
CITY COUNTRY
country_id id name name id
6 6 San Marino San Marino 6
7 7 Vatican City Vatican City 7
5 9 Greece Greece 9
10 11 Monaco Monaco 10
NATURAL JOIN used these columns to match rows:
city.id, city.name, country.id, country.name.
NATURAL JOIN is very rarely used in practice.

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SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

AGGREGATION AND GROUPING

GROUP BY groups together rows that have the same values in specified
columns. It computes summaries (aggregates) for each unique
combination of values.
CITY
id name country_id
1 Paris 1
CITY
101 Marseille 1
country_id count
102 Lyon 1
1 3
2 Berlin 2
2 3
103 Hamburg 2
4 2
104 Munich 2
3 Warsaw 4
105 Cracow 4

AGGREGATE FUNCTIONS
avg(expr) − average value for rows within the group
count(expr) − count of values for rows within the group
max(expr) − maximum value within the group
min(expr) − minimum value within the group
sum(expr) − sum of values within the group

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EXAMPLE QUERIES
Find out the number of cities:
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM city;

Find out the number of cities with non-null ratings:

SELECT COUNT(rating)
FROM city;

Find out the number of distinctive country values:

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT country_id)
FROM city;

Find out the smallest and the greatest country populations:

SELECT MIN(population), MAX(population)
FROM country;

Find out the total population of cities in respective countries:

SELECT country_id, SUM(population)
FROM city
GROUP BY country_id;

Find out the average rating for cities in respective countries if the average
is above 3.0:
SELECT country_id, AVG(rating)
FROM city
GROUP BY country_id
HAVING AVG(rating) > 3.0;

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SQL Basics Cheat Sheet

SUBQUERIES
A subquery is a query that is nested inside another query, or inside
another subquery. There are different types of subqueries.

SINGLE VALUE
The simplest subquery returns exactly one column and exactly one row. It
can be used with comparison operators =, <, <=, >, or >=.
This query finds cities with the same rating as Paris:
SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE rating = (
SELECT rating
FROM city
WHERE name = 'Paris'
);

MULTIPLE VALUES
A subquery can also return multiple columns or multiple rows. Such
subqueries can be used with operators IN, EXISTS, ALL, or ANY.
This query finds cities in countries that have a population above 20M:
SELECT name
FROM city
WHERE country_id IN (
SELECT country_id
FROM country
WHERE population > 20000000
);

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CORRELATED
A correlated subquery refers to the tables introduced in the outer query. A
correlated subquery depends on the outer query. It cannot be run
independently from the outer query.
This query finds cities with a population greater than the average
population in the country:
SELECT *
FROM city main_city
WHERE population > (
SELECT AVG(population)
FROM city average_city
WHERE average_city.country_id =
main_city.country_id
);

This query finds countries that have at least one city:

SELECT name
FROM country
WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT *
FROM city
WHERE country_id = country.id
);

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SET OPERATIONS
Set operations are used to combine the results of two or more queries into
a single result. The combined queries must return the same number of
columns and compatible data types. The names of the corresponding
columns can be different.

CYCLING SKATING
id name country id name country
1 YK DE 1 YK DE
2 ZG DE 2 DF DE
3 WT PL 3 AK PL
... ... ... ... ... ...

UNION
UNION combines the results of two result sets and removes duplicates.
UNION ALL doesn't remove duplicate rows.

This query displays German cyclists together with German skaters:

SELECT name
FROM cycling
WHERE country = 'DE'
UNION / UNION ALL
SELECT name
FROM skating
WHERE country = 'DE';

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INTERSECT
INTERSECT returns only rows that appear in both result sets.

This query displays German cyclists who are also German skaters at the
same time:
SELECT name
FROM cycling
WHERE country = 'DE'
INTERSECT
SELECT name
FROM skating
WHERE country = 'DE';

EXCEPT
EXCEPT returns only the rows that appear in the first result set but do not
appear in the second result set.

This query displays German cyclists unless they are also German skaters at
the same time:
SELECT name
FROM cycling
WHERE country = 'DE'
EXCEPT / MINUS
SELECT name
FROM skating
WHERE country = 'DE';

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