SQL Multiplication

The * operator multiplies two numeric values — commonly used for percentage-based raises, tax calculations, or unit-price times quantity.

What & Why

Plain * multiplies two numbers. A common pattern: multiplying a base value by a decimal factor to compute a percentage-based adjustment, like a raise or discount.

See How It Works

BUSINESS QUESTION

Marketing wants campaign spend shown in cents for an export.

id	name	channel	spend	start_date	end_date	status	target_segment
1	Spring Launch	google_ads	55000.00	2024-01-15	2024-03-31	active	smb
2	Retention Webinar	email	45000.00	2024-02-10	2024-04-15	active	enterprise
3	Finance Retargeting	linkedin	50000.00	2024-03-12	2024-05-31	active	enterprise
4	Enterprise Search	google_ads	60000.00	2024-04-01	2024-06-30	active	enterprise

EXAMPLE QUERY

SELECT
  id AS campaign_id,
  spend,
  ROUND(spend * 100)::bigint AS spend_cents
FROM marketing.campaigns
ORDER BY campaign_id;

RESULT — exact output from the displayed Queryflo rows

campaign_id	spend	spend_cents
1	55000.00	5500000
2	45000.00	4500000
3	50000.00	5000000
4	60000.00	6000000

Multiplying the real decimal spend values by 100 returns whole cents.

Now You Try

Practice this concept

Marketing wants campaign spend shown in cents for an export.

Available schema

marketing

Prefix tables with marketing.table_name.

campaign_idspendspend_cents

marketing.campaigns

Column	Type
id	integer
name	text
channel	text
spend	numeric
start_date	date
end_date	date
status	text
target_segment	text
legacy_id	text

query.sql

Intermediate business practice