SQL - SUM Function

SQL SUM function is used to find out the sum of a field in various records.

To understand SUM function, consider an employee_tbl table, which is having the following records −

 SQL> SELECT * FROM employee_tbl; +------+------+------------+--------------------+ | id | name | work_date | daily_typing_pages | +------+------+------------+--------------------+ | 1 | John | 2007-01-24 | 250 | | 2 | Ram | 2007-05-27 | 220 | | 3 | Jack | 2007-05-06 | 170 | | 3 | Jack | 2007-04-06 | 100 | | 4 | Jill | 2007-04-06 | 220 | | 5 | Zara | 2007-06-06 | 300 | | 5 | Zara | 2007-02-06 | 350 | +------+------+------------+--------------------+ 7 rows in set (0.00 sec) 

Now suppose based on the above table you want to calculate total of all the dialy_typing_pages, then you can do so by using the following command −

 SQL> SELECT SUM(daily_typing_pages) -> FROM employee_tbl; +-------------------------+ | SUM(daily_typing_pages) | +-------------------------+ | 1610 | +-------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) 

You can take sum of various records set using GROUP BY clause. Following example will sum up all the records related to a single person and you will have total typed pages by every person.

 SQL> SELECT name, SUM(daily_typing_pages) -> FROM employee_tbl GROUP BY name; +------+-------------------------+ | name | SUM(daily_typing_pages) | +------+-------------------------+ | Jack | 270 | | Jill | 220 | | John | 250 | | Ram | 220 | | Zara | 650 | +------+-------------------------+ 5 rows in set (0.17 sec)