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BBC Country Profiles

Some examples of simple WHERE statements:

1. The population of 'France'.
Strings should be in 'single quotes';

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2. The names and population densities for the very large countries.
We can use mathematical and string expressions as well as field names and constants.

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3. Where to find some very small, very rich countries.
We use AND to ensure that two or more conditions hold true.

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4. Which of Ceylon, Iran, Persia and Sri Lanka is the name of a country?
The word IN allows us to check if an item is in a list.

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5. What are the countries beginning with D?
The word LIKE permits pattern matching - % is the wildcard.

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6. Which countries are not too small and not too big?
BETWEEN allows range checking - note that it is inclusive.

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Simple use of SELECT and WHERE

These statements take the form :

SELECT attribute-list
   FROM table-name
   WHERE condition
  • attribute-list
    • This is usually a comma separated list of attributes (field names)
    • Expressions involving these attributes may be used. The normal mathematical operators +, -, *, / may be used on numeric values. String values may be concatenated using ||
    • To select all attributes use *
    • The attributes in this case are: name, region, area, population and gdp
  • table-name
    • In these examples the table is always bbc.
  • condition
    • This is a boolean expression which each row must satisfy.
    • Operators which may be used include AND, OR, NOT, >, >=, =, <, <=
    • The LIKE operator permits strings to be compared using 'wild cards'. The symbols _ and % are used to represent a single character or a sequence of characters. Note that MS Access SQL uses ? and * instead of _ and % .
    • The IN operator allows an item to be tested against a list of values.
    • There is a BETWEEN operator for checking ranges.