Thursday, July 26, 2007

The difference between Where and Group By

"The WHERE clause (# 3) evaluates data before the GROUP BY clause does. When you want to limit data after it's grouped, use HAVING. Often, the result will be the same whether you use WHERE or HAVING, but it's important to remember that the clauses are not interchangeable. Here's a good guideline to follow when you're in doubt: Use WHERE to filter records; use HAVING to filter groups.
Usually, you'll use HAVING to evaluate a group using an aggregate. For instance, the following statement returns a unique list of ZIP codes, but the list might not include every ZIP code in the underlying data source: SELECT ZIP, Count(ZIP) AS CustomersByZIP FROM Customers GROUP BY ZIP HAVING Count(ZIP) = 1
Only those groups with just one customer make it to the results. "

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