What is the benefit of using MySQL SUM() function with GROUP BY clause?

When we use MySQL SUM() function with GROUP BY Clause the SUM() function evaluates the sum for every group specified in the GROUP BY clause. The benefit of using SUM() with GROUP BY clause is that we can easily find the total of a particular group. To understand the above concept, 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)

The following query will sum up all the records related to a single person and you will have total typed pages by every person.

mysql> SELECT name, SUM(daily_typing_pages)
    -> FROM employee_tbl GROUP BY name;
+------+-------------------------+
| name | SUM(daily_typing_pages) |
+------+-------------------------+
| Jack |          270            |
| Jill |          220            |
| John |          250            |
| Ram  |          220            |
| Zara |          650            |
+------+-------------------------+
5 rows in set (0.17 sec)