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The CASE expression, for example, enables SQL to perform conditional branching within queries, providing a mechanism to return different values based on evaluated conditions. This logic can be particularly useful for data transformation during retrieval, especially in SELECT statements.
Conjunctive queries also correspond to select-project-join queries in relational algebra (i.e., relational algebra queries that do not use the operations union or difference) and to select-from-where queries in SQL in which the where-condition uses exclusively conjunctions of atomic equality conditions, i.e. conditions constructed from column ...
The Boolean data type is primarily associated with conditional statements, which allow different actions by changing control flow depending on whether a programmer-specified Boolean condition evaluates to true or false. It is a special case of a more general logical data type—logic does not always need to be Boolean (see probabilistic logic).
In SELECT statements SQL returns only results for which the WHERE clause returns a value of True; i.e., it excludes results with values of False and also excludes those whose value is Unknown. Along with True and False, the Unknown resulting from direct comparisons with Null thus brings a fragment of three-valued logic to SQL. The truth tables ...
If-then-else flow diagram A nested if–then–else flow diagram. In computer science, conditionals (that is, conditional statements, conditional expressions and conditional constructs) are programming language constructs that perform different computations or actions or return different values depending on the value of a Boolean expression, called a condition.
Predicates, which specify conditions that can be evaluated to SQL three-valued logic (3VL) (true/false/unknown) or Boolean truth values and are used to limit the effects of statements and queries, or to change program flow. Queries, which retrieve the data based on specific criteria. This is an important element of SQL.
These confusions arise because the Law of Identity is restricted in SQL's logic. When dealing with equality comparisons using the NULL literal or the UNKNOWN truth-value, SQL will always return UNKNOWN as the result of the expression. This is a partial equivalence relation and makes SQL an example of a Non-Reflexive logic. [33]
Wherever logic is applied, especially in mathematical discussions, it has the same meaning as above: it is an abbreviation for if and only if, indicating that one statement is both necessary and sufficient for the other. This is an example of mathematical jargon (although, as noted above, if is more often used than iff in statements of definition).