SQL AVG function is used to find out the average of a field in various records.
To understand AVG function, consider an employee_tbl table, which is having the following records −
SQL> SELECT * FROM employee_tbl;
+------+------+------------+--------------------+
| id | name | work_date | daily_typing_pages |
+------+------+------------+--------------------+
| 1 | John | 2007-01-24 | 250 |
| 2 | Ram | 2007-05-27 | 220 |
| 3 | Jack | 2007-05-06 | 170 |
| 3 | Jack | 2007-04-06 | 100 |
| 4 | Jill | 2007-04-06 | 220 |
| 5 | Zara | 2007-06-06 | 300 |
| 5 | Zara | 2007-02-06 | 350 |
+------+------+------------+--------------------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Now suppose based on the above table you want to calculate the average of all the dialy_typing_pages, then you can do so by using the following command −
SQL> SELECT AVG(daily_typing_pages)
-> FROM employee_tbl;
+-------------------------+
| AVG(daily_typing_pages) |
+-------------------------+
| 230.0000 |
+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.03 sec)
You can take an average of various records set using the GROUP BY clause. The following example will take an average of all the records related to a single person and you will have average typed pages by every person.
SQL> SELECT name, AVG(daily_typing_pages)
-> FROM employee_tbl GROUP BY name;
+------+-------------------------+
| name | AVG(daily_typing_pages) |
+------+-------------------------+
| Jack | 135.0000 |
| Jill | 220.0000 |
| John | 250.0000 |
| Ram | 220.0000 |
| Zara | 325.0000 |
+------+-------------------------+
5 rows in set (0.20 sec)