Summary of Aggregate Function Behavior

An example can help to summarize the behavior of the aggregate functions. Assume that the testtable table has a single INTEGER column that is named num. The contents of this table are as follows.
num
2
2
2
3
3
4
(NULL)
You can use aggregate functions to obtain information about the num column and the testtable table. The following query uses the AVG function to obtain the average of all the non-NULL values in the num column:
SELECT AVG(num) AS average_number FROM testtable;
The following table shows the result of this query.
average_number
2.66666666666667
You can use the other aggregate functions in SELECT statements that are similar to the preceding example. If you enter a series of SELECT statements that have different aggregate functions in the projection list and do not include a WHERE clause, you receive the results that the following table shows.
Function Results   Function Results
COUNT (*) 7   MAX 4
COUNT (DISTINCT) 3   MAX(DISTINCT) 4
COUNT (ALL num) 6   MIN 2
COUNT ( num ) 6   MIN(DISTINCT) 2
AVG 2.66666666666667   RANGE 2
AVG (DISTINCT) 3.00000000000000   SUM 16
STDEV 0.74535599249993   SUM(DISTINCT) 9
VARIANCE 0.55555555555556      

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