SQL Tutorial

Now we return to the aggregate functions. Remember we used the SUM keyword to calculate the total sales for all stores? What if we want to calculate the total sales for each store? Well, we need to do two things: First, we need to make sure we select the store name as well as total sales. Second, we need to make sure that all the sales figures are grouped by stores. The corresponding SQL syntax is,

SELECT "column_name1", SUM("column_name2")
FROM "table_name"
GROUP BY "column_name1"

In our example, table Store_Information,

Table Store_Information

store_name	Sales	Date
Los Angeles	$1500	Jan-05-1999
San Diego	$250	Jan-07-1999
Los Angeles	$300	Jan-08-1999
Boston	$700	Jan-08-1999

we would key in,

SELECT store_name, SUM(Sales)
FROM Store_Information
GROUP BY store_name

Result:

store_name	SUM(Sales)
Los Angeles	$1800
San Diego	$250
Boston	$700

The GROUP BY keyword is used when we are selecting multiple columns from a table (or tables) and at least one arithematic operator appears in the SELECT statement. When that happens, we need to GROUP BY all the other selected columns, i.e., all columns except the one(s) operated on by the arithematic operator.