Multiple choice technology databases

Evaluate the SQL statement: SELECT LPAD(salary,10,*) FROM EMP WHERE EMP_ID = 1001; If the employee with the EMP_ID 1001 has a salary of 17000, what is displayed?

  1. 17000.00

  2. 17000*****

  3. **17000.00

  4. An error statement
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

LPAD(salary,10,*) will fail because * is not a valid padding character - it's a SQL wildcard character that has special meaning. The LPAD function expects a literal character string for padding, not a metacharacter. This causes an error regardless of salary value. LPAD would pad to length 10 with the specified character if valid.

AI explanation

To answer this question, let's analyze the SQL statement step by step:

The SQL statement is as follows:

SELECT LPAD(salary, 10, *) FROM EMP WHERE EMP_ID = 1001;

The LPAD function in SQL is used to pad a string or number with a specific character to a specified length. In this case, the salary column is being padded with "*" characters to a length of 10.

The WHERE clause specifies that only the row where EMP_ID is equal to 1001 should be selected.

Given that the employee with EMP_ID 1001 has a salary of 17000, let's evaluate the statement:

SELECT LPAD(17000, 10, *) FROM EMP WHERE EMP_ID = 1001;

The LPAD function will pad the salary value of 17000 with "*" characters to a length of 10:

17000*****

Hence, the correct answer is D - An error statement. This is because the SQL statement is syntactically incorrect due to the use of an asterisk (*) as the padding character instead of a valid character or string.

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