Oracle SQL: the Essential Reference

1.6. Relational Operators

An operator manipulates data elements and returns a result. The data elements that are operated upon are called operands or arguments, and a special character or keyword represents the actual operator. Oracle SQL supports several types of operators, listed in this section.

1.6.1. Arithmetic Operators

Arithmetic operators perform arithmetical calculations on a pair of data elements and/or constants. Table 1-1 lists the arithmetic operators available in SQL.

Table 1-1. SQL's Arithmetic Operators

Operator	Description	Example
+	Addition	sal + comm
-	Subtraction	sal - comm
*	Multiplication	sal * 1.1
/	Division	sal / 12
-	Negation	-sal
+	Identity	+sal

1.6.2. Concatenation Operator

The concatenation operator (||) combines two character strings. Consider the following SQL statement:

SELECT fname || ' ' || lname
FROM employee_master;

This statement returns (for each row) a single string consisting of the first name, a space, and the last name.

Although most Oracle platforms use solid vertical bars (||) as the concatenation operator, some platforms, most notably IBM platforms using the EBCDIC character set, use the broken vertical bars (). When converting between ...