Question

This is a situation I’m generally facing while writing SQL queries. I think that writing the whole column (e.g. long case expressions, sum functions with long parameters) instead of aliases in GROUP BY expressions makes the query longer and less readable. Why doesn’t Oracle SQL allow us to use the column aliases in GROUP BY clause? There must be an important reason behind it.

Answer 1

It isn’t just Oracle SQL, in fact I believe it is conforming to the ANSI SQL standard (though I don’t have a reference for that). The reason is that the SELECT clause is logically processed after the GROUP BY clause, so at the time the GROUP BY is done the aliases don’t yet exist.

Perhaps this somewhat ridiculous example helps clarify the issue and the ambiguity that SQL is avoiding:

SQL> select job as sal, sum(sal) as job
  2  from scott.emp
  3  group by job;

SAL              JOB
--------- ----------
ANALYST         6000
CLERK           4150
MANAGER         8275
PRESIDENT       5000
SALESMAN        5600