Excel to SQL · Lesson 9 of 12

IF is CASE WHEN

In Excel, you'd reach for

fx=IF(D2>=5, "Bulk", "Single"), nested IFs, IFS

CASE WHEN is IF, written as a list instead of a nest. SQL checks each WHEN in order and uses the first one that's true. ELSE catches everything left over.

Try itEdit the query, then Run

id	quantity	order_size
1	1	single
2	3	few
3	1	single
4	2	few
5	4	few
6	2	few
7	1	single
8	2	few
9	2	few
10	2	few

Showing 10 of 15 rows. Press Run to see them all.

The real power is grouping by the label you just made, which in Excel needs a helper column and then a pivot:

SELECT CASE WHEN quantity >= 5 THEN 'bulk' ELSE 'small' END AS size,
       COUNT(*) AS orders
FROM orders
GROUP BY size;

Your turn

Label each subscription 'paying a lot' when mrr is 100 or more, otherwise 'standard', as a column called tier. Count subscriptions per tier as subs.

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The practice data (7 tables)

customers: one row per customer
subscriptions: one row per paid plan
events: one row per thing someone did
orders: one row per order
products: a lookup table
campaigns: one row per channel per month
tickets: one row per support ticket

See every column and sample rows