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What is a Derived Column

Written by admin in Friday, October 26th 2007 under IT

A derived column is a result of a calculation (most of the time mathematical) that happens during the SQL query processing and generates a new column which is not part of the original table definition. For example, in our table we have salary column present but when we want to extract a percentage of the salary or portion of the salary, we generally create a column on the fly with the mathematical calculation from the existing salary column.

Suppose in a well managed successful organization, the HR head decided to reduce the salary by 20% of all the employees just to show that he is something. To know the future salary of the employees working in the dept 114, we have to use a derived column as mentioned in the following query.

SELECT emp_no, dept_no, salary “Actual Salary”,
(Salary * 80/100) “Proposed Salary” <== This is a derived Column
FROM emp
WHERE dept_no = 114
GROUP BY 1,2,3,4
ORDER BY 1, 2

Result:-