SQL Aggregate Function MIN()

In SQL, the MIN() function is an aggregate function that returns the minimum value in a set of values. The function takes a single argument, which is the name of the column or expression to be evaluated.

Here is an example of using the MIN() function to find the lowest salary in a employees table:

SELECT MIN(salary) AS min_salary FROM employees;

In this example, the MIN() function is used to find the lowest value in the salary column of the employees table. The AS keyword is used to alias the column name as min_salary.

The MIN() function can also be used with the GROUP BY clause to find the minimum value for each group in a table. For example, consider the following sales table:

+---------+-------+
| product | sales |
+---------+-------+
| A       | 100   |
| A       | 200   |
| B       | 150   |
| B       | 250   |
+---------+-------+

To find the lowest sales value for each product, we can use the following query:

SELECT product, MIN(sales) AS min_sales FROM sales GROUP BY product;

In this example, the MIN() function is used with the GROUP BY clause to find the lowest sales value for each unique value in the product column. The result of the query is a table with two columns: product and min_sales. The MIN() function is applied to the sales column for each group of rows that share the same product value.