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what's going on everybody my name is
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Alex free brands today what are we
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talking about aliasing now all aliasing
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really is is temporarily changing the
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column name or the table name in your
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script and it's not really gonna impact
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your output at all
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aliasing is really used for the
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readability of your script so that if
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you hand this off to somebody or
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somebody comes behind you and starts
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working on this they can more easily
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understand it and it may not sound super
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useful especially for small scripts like
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what we have on the screen but when you
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start getting to larger scripts where
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you have six seven or eight joins and
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you're selecting ten different column
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names it actually is very useful and
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very important so let's get into how
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that actually works and then I'll have
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an example later of how we can use
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aliasing with a little bit of a larger
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query so in this table
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let's select first name and execute what
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we want to do is just write as and let's
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do f name and all that's gonna do is
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it's gonna rename this column from first
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name which it was originally named to f
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name now you can use as but you can also
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just get rid of that and do it exactly
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how I have it and it's still gonna work
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perfectly you can either use the adds or
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you can not use it I typically don't I
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just put a space in between the actual
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column and the alias sounds look at an
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example of how this might actually be
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useful so we have a first name and a
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last name in this column so what we're
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gonna do is actually combine those so
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let's do plus and let's add a space in
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there and let's do a plus and let's do
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last name so this is gonna take the
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first name out of space and then do the
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last name and we're gonna do that as I
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let's do full name and let's execute
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this so now we have a column called full
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name which is our alias so we've
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combined the first name and the last
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name column into one single column and
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we've renamed it full name if we have
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not used this alias at all it would have
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just said this which is no column name
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at all we don't typically want that when
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we have an output we want to give this
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column a name so that's somebody who is
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actually looking at this script or who's
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looking at the output of the script
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actually understand the what is
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contained within this column so for that
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we're just going to keep it as full name
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now another time that you're often going
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to use aliasing in the Select statement
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is when
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using aggregate functions so in this
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table we have age so let's pull that up
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really quick so we have age right here
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and let's actually just do the average
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age and when we execute this we're gonna
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get no column name and 31 so we want to
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do is give it a verage age and when we
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do that we now have a column name and
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again you want to have a column name in
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case someone comes up behind you and is
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reading the scripts that they understand
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what this column is being used for now
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that we've looked at aliasing column
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names let's look at aliasing table names
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it basically is the exact same thing
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we're just gonna write as and let's do
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demo for demographics and let's do demo
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dot and it's going to give us all of our
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options and we'll do employee ID so when
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you alias in a table name when you are
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selecting it in the Select statement you
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actually need to preface your column
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name with a table name or the table
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alias dot and then employee ID and this
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is extremely important to do especially
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when you have a lot of joins that you're
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doing or you're selecting a lot of
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columns we have several joins because
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they can get in very very messy quick so
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let's actually join this to employee
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salary and let's do that on demo dot
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employee ID is equal to sow dot employee
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ID so now let's do demo dot employee ID
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comma Sal dot and let's do a salary so
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looking at the script now is very clean
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is very easy to understand and that is
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what's so important with aliasing if for
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example we took this off every time we
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wanted to reference this table we would
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have to put the entire table name and
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putting the entire table name is correct
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it just is very cumbersome and does not
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look clean at all and so using something
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like demo as an alias makes it a lot
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more easily readable and a lot more
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manageable when you're looking at it
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we have a very long script let's look at
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this query where we're joining the
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others
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three separate tables and after each
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table we have an alias for employee
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demographics we have a police salary we
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have B and warehouse employee
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demographics we have C now unfortunately
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I have seen a lot of scripts that look
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exactly like this and this is what you
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do not want to do you do not want to use
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your aliasing to just write an a a B or
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a C that is very frowned upon when
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writing queries because it really
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doesn't give any context to what the
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table that you're referencing is and it
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gets really confusing as this query
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continues to grow and as you add more
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columns to your select statement it
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makes it more difficult to understand
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where those columns are coming from and
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so when I'm reading that I say select a
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dot employee ID okay what's a a is
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employee demographics so you really do
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not want to do that now it's looking an
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example of what it should look like so
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for employee demographics instead of
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having an alias of an a I used demo for
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demographics for employee salary I use
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Sal and for warehouse employee
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demographics I used where now this is
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not perfect by any means but in the
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select statement if you're just glancing
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at it you can easily understand which
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columns are coming from which tables so
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when I look at employee ID I know that's
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coming from employee demographics
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because I have a demo as the alias so
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it's a lot easier to understand and when
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you hand this query off to somebody it
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is gonna be a lot easier for them to
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read through it and understand where
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those columns and those table names are
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coming from and so they will appreciate
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that in the long run so that is all I
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got that is aliasing again not a super
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tough subject but a really important one
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to understand especially as you start
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working in teams and as you start
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creating more and more complex queries
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you want to have it more organized and
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more easily readable and so it may not
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come into play with those really simple
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queries but again as you build out those
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more complex queries this becomes very
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useful I really hope you enjoyed this
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video if you did be sure to comment and
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subscribe below thank you so much for
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watching and I'll see in the next video