Beginning SQL

Chapter 3
NOT Operator
Examples thus far have been filtered based on true conditions. The NOT operator, however, selects a
record if the condition is false. The following SQL selects records where the State field is not equal to
Golden State.
SELECT FirstName
FROM MemberDetails
WHERE NOT State = ‘Golden State’;
The preceding example is the same as this example:
SELECT FirstName
FROM MemberDetails
WHERE State ‘Golden State’;
The only difference is the use of the “not equal to” operator () instead of the NOT operator. In this situation,
the “not equal to” operator () reads easier than the NOT operator.
You can also use the NOT operator with brackets:
SELECT City
FROM MemberDetails
WHERE NOT (City = ‘Townsville’ OR City = ‘Orange Town’ OR City = ‘New Town’);
The preceding SQL selects all records where the conditions inside the brackets are not true. In this case,
the condition inside the brackets is that the City is equal to Townsville or it is equal to Orange Town or
it is equal to New Town. Using the NOT operator is the same as saying “is not true,” which is the same as
saying “is false.” So, you could rephrase the explanation to say that the query is looking for values that
are false, that do not equal Townsville, Orange Town, or New Town. The results returned are shown
here:
City
Big City
Windy Village
Windy Village
Big City
Big City
As you see shortly, you can use the NOT operator in combination with other operators such as BETWEEN,
ANY, SOME, AND, OR, or LIKE.
BETWEEN Operator
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The BETWEEN operator allows you to specify a range, where the range is between one value and another.
Until now, when you needed to check for a value within a certain range, you used the “greater than or
equal to” operator (>=) or the “less than or equal to” (