Bitwise operators perform bit operations on integer data types; all bitwise operators introduced into SQL by RDBMS vendors are listed in Table 11-6. To understand the results of the bitwise operations one must understand the basics of Boolean algebra.
Cross-References |
See Appendix L for more information on Boolean algebra. |
Operator |
Description |
---|---|
& |
Bitwise AND |
| |
Bitwise OR |
/\ |
Bitwise exclusive OR |
~ |
Bitwise NOT |
The operands for bitwise operators can be of either the integer data type or the binary string data type (except for IMAGE data type) category. Data type compatibility is given in Table 11-7. Bitwise operations are not typical for a high-level language such as SQL, and one might be hard-pressed to come up with a usage example.
Left Operand |
Right Operand |
---|---|
BINARY |
INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT |
BIT |
INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, BIT |
INT |
INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, BINARY, VARBINARY |
SMALLINT |
INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, BINARY, VARBINARY |
TINYINT |
INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, BINARY, VARBINARY |
VARBINARY |
INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT |
One of the possible uses could be a complex bit mask made for color — after all RDBMS now supports more than just text and numeric data. Consider a combination of zeroes and ones, for example 0101. When a binary AND is applied to this number and to another binary number, for example 1101, it will produce the following result:
SELECT 5 & 13 result result ------ 5
The binary representation of 5 is 0101. In this example of logical AND, only 1 and 1 produce 1, any other combinations — namely 1 and 0, or 0 and 0 — produce 0.
0101 (decimal 5) 1101 (decimal 13) ---- 0101 (decimal 5)
To decode or encode a pixel in an image stored in your database you would use bit mask and shifting. Another possible use of the XOR (exclusive OR) operator would be to encrypt data based on some numeric key.
Only Microsoft SQL Server provides bitwise operators; the IBM DB2 UDB dialect of SQL does not have bit operations support built into the language itself, and Oracle 9i has a BITAND function that works identically to SQL Server's bitwise AND.