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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T20:23:25+00:00

I was playing around with SQL Queries and this one came to my mind

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I was playing around with SQL Queries and this one came to my mind – select x,y from table T.

Here x and y can be arithmetic expressions like 2.0/5.0 OR 1+2, the result has the number of rows of table T, with the first column having value 2.0/5.0 i.e. 0.444444 and the second column having value 3.

I am curious to know as to how this query is executed. I have learned that in the SQL query engine there is a mapping from SQL representation of a query to an internal representation (like relational algebra) which is then optimized in order to yield an optimal query execution plan.

Please correct my understanding if its wrong – For the query which I have stated, there would be an internal mapping from my query Q to an internal representation which is equivalent to that of select * from table T. Then for all the rows returned, n number of columns are projected out where n is the number of arithmetic expressions stated in the Q. And all rows for the n columns would have their respective evaluations of the arithmetic expressions.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It most likely depends on the database.

    If the expressions you use for x and y were constant then a decent database ought to recognize that and perform the calculation only once and just putting the value in the result set.

    If the expressions included some other function then it would have to execute the expression each time in case the function had side effects.

    In general you are correct, calculate the virtual table described in the from clause, then I believe the filters from the where clause are applied followed by the select clause.

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