How can we divide the result set returned by MySQL into groups?

It can be done by using GROUP BY clause in the SELECT statement. We can specify a column as grouping criteria with the help of GROUP BY clause. Due to the specified grouping criteria, rows with the same value in a particular column are considered as a single group. In this way, the result set returned by MySQL SELECT statement will be divided into groups.

Example

Following is a good example to understand it −

We have a table named ‘employees’ as follows −

mysql> Select * from employees;
+------+-------------+--------+------------+
| id   | designation | Salary | DoJ        |
+------+-------------+--------+------------+
| 100  | Asst.Prof   | 50000  | 2016-06-15 |
| 300  | Prof        | 85000  | 2010-05-18 |
| 250  | Asso.Prof   | 74000  | 2013-02-12 |
| 400  | Prof        | 90000  | 2009-05-19 |
| 200  | Asst.Prof   | 60000  | 2015-05-11 |
+------+-------------+--------+------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now with the help of following script we will divide the output into groups;

mysql> select designation, count(*), AVG(salary) from employees group by designation;
+-------------+----------+-------------+
| designation | count(*) | AVG(salary) |
+-------------+----------+-------------+
| Asso.Prof   | 1        | 74000.0000  |
| Asst.Prof   | 2        | 55000.0000  |
| Prof        | 2        | 87500.0000  |
+-------------+----------+-------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Above query returns the result set into groups of Asso.Prof, total 1 in number and having average salary 74000, Asst.Prof, total 2 in number and having an average salary of 55000 and Prof, total 2 in number and having average salary 87500.