Expressions



Expressions can be used in the field list of a Select, in Insert values, in Update assignments and in Where clauses.

  • Numbers: 10, -6, 3.14159
  • Strings: 'single quoted' or "double quoted". A doubled quote ('It''s') is not supported. A quote that follows a backslash does not end the string, but the backslash is kept: 'It's' returns It's.
  • Null: null


Operator Meaning
+ Adds numbers. When either side is a string, the values are concatenated: 'Id: ' + 5 returns 'Id: 5'.
- * / Subtraction, multiplication and division.
% Remainder (modulo).
Bitwise exclusive-or. Use Pow for exponentiation.
( ) Grouping, with standard order of operations.

A null on either side of + makes the result null (null propagation). Concat skips nulls instead.

These are used in Where clauses and join ON conditions:
Operator Meaning
= Equal (strings are compared without regard to case).
!= Not equal. The <> form is not supported.
> >= < <= Numeric comparisons.
LIKE, NOT LIKE Pattern matching, see Like.
BETWEEN, NOT BETWEEN Range matching, see Between.

Comparison operators can only be used in WHERE and ON clauses. Elsewhere, use the boolean functions such as IsEqual, IsGreater and IsLike, which return 1 or 0.

-- A line comment.
SELECT Id, Name FROM WordList:Language -- A trailing comment.
/* A block
   comment. */


Use Declare to define a variable for the rest of the script. Variables are referenced with an @ prefix. Applications using the client API pass parameters the same way, see Client.
DECLARE @Language = 2
SELECT Text FROM WordList:Word WHERE LanguageId = @Language


Every SELECT needs a FROM clause. To evaluate expressions that don't read any documents, select from the built-in Single schema, which contains exactly one document.
SELECT 10 + 10 as Twenty, 'Hello' + ' ' + 'World' as Greeting, Guid() as Id FROM Single




SQL :: Sha512
Returns the SHA-512 hash of the value's UTF-8 bytes as a lower case hex string.
SQL :: Sha512Agg
Returns a single SHA-512 hash of all of the values in each group, as a lower case hex string. Useful for detecting changes to a set of documents.
SQL :: ShowAggregateFunctions
Lists the built-in aggregate functions with their parameters and descriptions.
SQL :: ShowScalarFunctions
Lists the built-in scalar functions with their parameters and descriptions.
SQL :: Single
A built-in schema containing exactly one document, used to evaluate constant expressions.
SQL :: SubString
Returns length characters of the value, starting at the zero-based startIndex.
SQL :: Sum
Returns the total of the values in each group.
SQL :: Syntax
Basic KBSQL syntax and some examples.
SQL :: ToLower
Returns the value converted to lower case.
SQL :: ToNumeric
Returns the value converted to a number.