MySQL - MIN Function

MySQL MIN function is used to find out the record with minimum value among a record set.

To understand MIN function, consider an employee_tbl table, which is having the following records −

mysql> 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 fetch minimum value of daily_typing_pages, then you can do so simply using the following command −

mysql> SELECT MIN(daily_typing_pages)
   -> FROM employee_tbl;
+-------------------------+
| MIN(daily_typing_pages) |
+-------------------------+
|          100            |
+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

You can find all the records with minimum value for each name using GROUP BY clause as follows −

mysql>SELECT id, name, MIN(daily_typing_pages)
    -> FROM employee_tbl GROUP BY name;
+------+------+-------------------------+
|  id  | name | MIN(daily_typing_pages) |
+------+------+-------------------------+
|   3  | Jack |           100           |
|   4  | Jill |           220           |
|   1  | John |           250           |
|   2  | Ram  |           220           |
|   5  | Zara |           300           |
+------+------+-------------------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

You can use MIN Function along with MAX function to find out minimum value as well. Try out the following example −

mysql> SELECT MIN(daily_typing_pages) least, MAX(daily_typing_pages) max
   -> FROM employee_tbl;
+-------+------+
| least |  max |
+-------+------+
|  100  | 350  |
+-------+------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)