CEILING

CEILING is an advanced SQL function that is used to round up values. The function takes a single argument, which is a numeric or decimal number, and returns the smallest integer that is greater than or equal to the supplied number.

The syntax for using the CEILING function is:

CEILING (numeric_expression)

The numeric_expression is an expression of the exact numeric or approximate numeric data type categories, or types that can be implicitly converted to one of these categories.

For example, you have a table called 'Products' with a 'Price' column. Here's how you can use the CEILING function to round up all the prices to the nearest whole number:

SELECT ProductName, Price, CEILING (Price) AS RoundedUpPrice
FROM Products;

In this example, if the original price was $10.25, the RoundedUpPrice will be $11. This is because the CEILING function rounds up the 'Price' value to the nearest whole number.

It's essential to remember that CEILING always rounds up. So even if the Price is $10.01, the RoundedUpPrice according to CEILING would still be $11. If you want to round to the nearest whole number, you might want to use the ROUND function instead.

Another important note is that the return type of CEILING will be of the same type as the provided numeric expression. For instance, if you supply a numeric expression of type decimal, the return type will also be of type decimal.