SQL is a language that integrates with many database programs such as Oracle to allow programmers to develop, modify, organize and view information within a database. SQL is a very powerful language and programmers can implement many different techniques in order to achieve there goals.
Built in functions allow programmers to change view of information and edit existing information. Functions can be very powerful and modify a lot of data and they can also carry out minor changes to a database. Below, I will identify 5 functions in SQL and briefly describe their purpose.
1. The “GROUP BY” function is very effective and combines the results of different functions into groups. For example, if a user searches for customers who bought a particular item on a particular date, the group by function could be used to join these two functions into one table.
2. The “UCASE” function allows a user to change information from lower case to upper case. This may be helpful in a manually entered field, as it will standardize the information. People may input different cases and this function allows all the data to match.
3. The “LCASE” function does the exact opposite as the ucase function. If the programmer wants to put the text of a certain segment in lower case, they should use the lcase function. Again, this can be used to make uniform the data in varying fields.
4. The “ROUND” function is used in numeric fields and lets the programmer specify how many decimal points he or she would like in the database. The programmer can select the number of decimals they desire. This may be useful in a database with a lot of calculated fields.
5. The “NOW” function returns the current system date and time. This function may be helpful in calculated fields if the programmer is trying to get a time reference. Also, it may be helpful for something like an expense report or invoice because each purchase has their own date and time, but there is only one current date and time. This function can allow users to see how long ago purchases were made in relation to the current time.
