SQL AND, OR and NOT Operators

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SQL is a programming language used for managing and manipulating relational databases. In this guide, we will discuss the SQL AND, OR, and NOT operators and how they can be used to filter data in a database.

AND Operator

The AND operator is used to filter data based on multiple conditions. The AND operator returns only the rows that meet all of the specified conditions.

For example, if you want to retrieve all the employees who are older than 30 years and work in the Sales department, you would use the following SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM employees
WHERE age > 30 AND department = 'Sales';

In this example, the SQL statement retrieves all the columns from the employees table where the age of the employee is greater than 30 and the department is Sales.

OR Operator

The OR operator is used to filter data based on multiple conditions, but it returns the rows that meet at least one of the specified conditions.

For example, if you want to retrieve all the employees who are older than 30 years or work in the Sales department, you would use the following SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM employees
WHERE age > 30 OR department = 'Sales';

In this example, the SQL statement retrieves all the columns from the employees table where the age of the employee is greater than 30 or the department is Sales.

NOT Operator

The NOT operator is used to negate a condition. It returns all the rows that do not meet the specified condition.

For example, if you want to retrieve all the employees who are not older than 30 years, you would use the following SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM employees
WHERE NOT age > 30;

In this example, the SQL statement retrieves all the columns from the employees table where the age of the employee is not greater than 30.

Combining Operators

You can also combine the AND, OR, and NOT operators to filter data based on more complex conditions.

For example, if you want to retrieve all the employees who are older than 30 years and work in the Sales department, but not in the Sales Development department, you would use the following SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM employees
WHERE age > 30 AND department = 'Sales' AND NOT department = 'Sales Development';

In this example, the SQL statement retrieves all the columns from the employees table where the age of the employee is greater than 30 and the department is Sales and not in Sales Development.

It's important to note that the order of the operators in a SQL statement can affect the result set.

For example, in the above example, if you switch the order of the NOT operator and the AND operator, it would return a different result set.

SELECT * FROM employees
WHERE age > 30 NOT department = 'Sales Development' AND department = 'Sales';

In this example, the SQL statement retrieves all the columns from the employees table where the age of the employee is greater than 30 and not in Sales Development and the department is Sales.

This may not return the same results as the previous example as the NOT operator applies to the first condition and not the second one.