SQL SUM function is used to find out the sum of a field in various records.
To understand SUM 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 total of all the dialy_typing_pages, then you can do so by using the following command −
SQL> SELECT SUM(daily_typing_pages)
-> FROM employee_tbl;
+-------------------------+
| SUM(daily_typing_pages) |
+-------------------------+
| 1610 |
+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)