MIN Function

Description

The MIN function gets the smallest value of expressions of all rows. Only one expression is specified.

For expressions that return character strings, the string that appears earlier in alphabetical order becomes the minimum value; for those that return numbers, the smallest value becomes the minimum value.

For analytic function examples, see the following analytic function examples. For more information, see Overview.

Syntax

MIN ( [ { DISTINCT | DISTINCTROW } | UNIQUE | ALL ] expression )

• expression: Specifies an expression that returns a numeric or string value. A collection expression cannot be specified.
• ALL: Gets the minimum value for all data (default).
• DISTINCT or UNIQUE: Gets the maximum value without duplicates.

Example of Aggregate Function

The following example shows how to retrive the minimum number of gold (gold) medals that Korea won in the Olympics in the demodb database.

SELECT MIN(gold) FROM participant WHERE nation_code = 'KOR';

    min(gold)

=============

            7

Example of Analytic Function

The following example shows how to output the number of gold medals by year and the maximum number of gold medals in history, acquired by the country whose nation_code code starts with 'AU'.

SELECT host_year, nation_code, gold,

MIN(gold) OVER (PARTITION BY nation_code) mn_gold

FROM participant WHERE nation_code like 'AU%' ORDER BY nation_code, host_year;

    host_year  nation_code                  gold      mn_gold

=============================================================

         1988  'AUS'                           3            3

         1992  'AUS'                           7            3

         1996  'AUS'                           9            3

         2000  'AUS'                          16            3

         2004  'AUS'                          17            3

         1988  'AUT'                           1            0

         1992  'AUT'                           0            0

         1996  'AUT'                           0            0

         2000  'AUT'                           2            0

         2004  'AUT'                           2            0