About the Presentations

• The presentations cover the objectives found in the

opening of each chapter.
• All chapter objectives are listed in the beginning of
each presentation.
• You may customize the presentations to fit your
class needs.
• Some figures from the chapters are included. A
complete set of images from the book can be found
on the Instructor Resources disc.
©2016. Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
 Oracle 12c: SQL

Chapter 10
Selected Single-Row Functions

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 Objectives
• Use the UPPER, LOWER, and INITCAP functions to change the
case of field values and character strings
• Manipulate character substrings with the SUBSTR and INSTR
functions
• Nest functions inside other functions
• Determine the length of a character string using the LENGTH
function
• Use the LPAD and RPAD functions to pad a string to a certain
width
• Use the LTRIM and RTRIM functions to remove specific
characters strings
• Substitute character string values with the REPLACE and
TRANSLATE functions

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 Objectives (continued)

• Round and truncate numeric data using the ROUND

and TRUNC functions
• Return the remainder only of a division operation using
the MOD function
• Use the ABS function to set numeric values as positive
• Use the POWER function to raise a number to a
specified power
• Calculate the number of months between two dates
using the MONTHS_BETWEEN function
• Manipulate date data using the ADD_MONTHS,
NEXT_DAY, LAST_DAY, and TO_DATE functions

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 Objectives (continued)
• Differentiate between CURRENT_DATE and SYSDATE
values
• Extend pattern matching capabilities with regular
expressions
• Identify and correct problems associated with calculations
involving NULL values using the NVL function
• Display dates and numbers in a specific format with the
TO_CHAR function
• Perform condition processing similar to an IF statement with
the DECODE function
• Use the SOUNDEX function to identify character phonetics
• Convert string values to numeric with the TO_NUMBER
function
• Use the DUAL table to test functions

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 Terminology
• Function – predefined block of code that accepts
arguments
• Single-row function – returns one row of results for
each record processed
• Multiple-row function – returns one result per group
of data processed (covered in the next chapter)

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 Types of Functions

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 Case Conversion Functions
• Case conversion functions alter the case of data
stored in a column or character string
– Used in a SELECT clause, they alter the appearance
of the data in the results
– Used in a WHERE clause, they alter the value for
comparison

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 LOWER Function

• Used to convert characters to lowercase

letters

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 UPPER Function
• Used to convert characters to uppercase letters
• It can be used in the same way as the LOWER function
– To affect the display of characters, it is used in a SELECT clause
– To modify the case of characters for a search condition, it is used in a WHERE clause
• The syntax for the UPPER function is UPPER(c)
– Where c is the character string or field to be converted into uppercase characters

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 INITCAP Function

• Used to convert characters to mixed case

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 Character Manipulation Functions

• Character manipulation functions manipulate data

by extracting substrings, counting the number of
characters, replacing strings, etc.

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 SUBSTR Function

• Used to return a substring, or portion of a string

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 INSTR Function

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 Nesting Functions

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 LENGTH Function

• Used to determine the number of characters in a

string

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 LPAD and RPAD Functions

• Used to pad, or fill in, a character string to a fixed

width

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 LTRIM and RTRIM Functions

• Used to remove a specific string of characters

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 REPLACE Function

• Substitutes a string with another specified string

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 TRANSLATE Function

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 CONCAT Function

• Used to concatenate two character strings

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 Number Functions
• Allow for manipulation of numeric data
– ROUND
– TRUNC
– MOD
– ABS

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 ROUND Function
• Used to round numeric columns to a stated precision

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 TRUNC Function
• Used to truncate a numeric value to a specific position

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 MOD Function

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 ABS Function

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 Date Functions
• Used to perform date calculations or format date
values
• Subtract date for number of days difference

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 MONTHS_BETWEEN Function

• Determines the number of months between

two dates

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 ADD_MONTHS Function

• Adds a specified number of months to a date

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 NEXT_DAY Function

• Determines the next occurrence of a

specified day of the week after a given date

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 TO_DATE Function

• Converts various date formats to the internal

format (DD-MON-YY) used by Oracle 11g

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 Format Model Elements - Dates

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 ROUND Function

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 TRUNC Function

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 Regular Expressions
• Regular expressions allow the description of
complex patterns in textual data

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 REGEXP_LIKE

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 Other Functions
• NVL
• NVL2
• TO_CHAR
• DECODE
• SOUNDEX

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 NVL Function
• Substitutes a value for a NULL value

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 NVL2 Function
• Allows different actions based on whether a value is
NULL

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 NULLIF Function

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 TO_CHAR Function
• Converts dates and numbers to a formatted
character string

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 Format Model Elements –
Time and Number

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 DECODE Function

• Determines action based upon values in a list

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 CASE Expression

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 SOUNDEX Function

• References phonetic representation of words

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 TO_NUMBER Function

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 DUAL Table
• Dummy table
• Consists of one column and one row
• Can be used for table reference in the FROM
clause

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 Using DUAL

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 Summary
• Single-row functions return a result for each row or
record processed
• Case conversion functions such as UPPER, LOWER,
and INITCAP can be used to alter the case of character
strings
• Character manipulation functions can be used to extract
substrings (portions of a string), identify the position of
a substring in a string, replace occurrences of a string
with another string, determine the length of a character
string, and trim spaces or characters from strings
• Nesting one function within another allows multiple
operations to be performed on data
©2016. Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. 49
 Summary (continued)
• Simple number functions such as ROUND and TRUNC
can round or truncate a number on both the left and right
side of a decimal
• The MOD function is used to return the remainder of a
division operation
• Date functions can be used to perform calculations with
dates or to change the format of dates entered by a user
• Regular expressions enable complex pattern matching
operations
• The NVL, NVL2, and NULLIF functions are used to
address problems encountered with NULL values

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 Summary (continued)
• The TO_CHAR function lets a user present numeric
data and dates in a specific format
• The DECODE function allows an action to be taken to
be determined by a specific value
• The searched CASE expression enables you to
evaluate conditions to determine the resulting value
• The SOUNDEX function looks for records based on the
phonetic representation of characters
• The DUAL table can be helpful when testing functions

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