SQL Aggregate Functions

SQL Aggregate functions perform calculations in an SQL query. Aggregates are most often used in combination with a Group By clause. elow are the SQL aggregate functions available in an MS Access query: Aggregate Function Select Sum Select Avg Select Min Select Max Select Count Select StDev Select Var Description Total (count) of the field values Average of the field values Lowest (minimum) field value Highest (maximum) field value Count of the values other than nulls Standard deviation of the field values including date/time fields Variance of the field values including date/time

Here are some examples of aggregate function usage: Select Count Aggregate Function Query Select Count(Emp_ID) From M_Employees; The query above simply counts the autonumber field in the M_Employees table. Select Average Aggregate Function Example Select Avg(Emp_Salary) From M_Employees Where Emp_Age<50; The above aggregate query determines the average salary for employees under 50 years of age. The SQL aggregate query below gets a little interesting by showing you how to answer more complex question of your data: M_Employees
ID Emp_Name Emp_Salary Emp_Age 1 Joe 2 billy 3 Molly 4 bobby 5 robert $18.00 $17.00 $16.00 $15.00 $14.00 51 52 53 41 42

M_Employees
ID Emp_Name Emp_Salary Emp_Age 6 milly 7 harry 8 ed 9 sally $13.00 $12.00 $11.00 $10.00 43 44 45 46

SELECT avg(iif(emp_age>=50,Emp_Salary,null)) as Over_50_Salary,avg(iif(emp_age<50,emp_salary,null)) as Under_50_Salary FROM M_Employees;

Over_50_Salary Under_50_Salary $17.00 $12.50

Note the use of the immediate if (iif) to bracket the results and return two columns where the would normally be only one. Note there is no Group By which is normally associated with an SQL aggregate function query. Note we are using aliases (as) to generate our own column names. Note nulls are skipped in the average aggregate and that is what makes this query work. Select StDev Query Using the Employee table shown above now we get the standard deviation of the salary column: SELECT StDev([Emp_Salary]) AS Salary_Standard_Deviation FROM M_Employees; Results are pretty simple:

SQL Select Var Aggregate Variance Query SELECT Var([Emp_Salary]) AS Salary_Variance FROM M_Employees; The results are shown below:

Here are some additional techniques to consider... When creating a report it is often useful to have the Count Average and Standard Deviation listed at the bottom of each column of numbers. As fairly simple technique is to use a series of union queries to build the result rows. The first query would retrieve all the raw numbers in a multi row list. The second union query would append the aggregate count function. The third union query would add the aggregate average function. Finally the last union select would add the standard deviation.