Which construct describes a non arithmetic condition such as NOT IN or NOT LIKE?

• A. Clause
• B. Condition
• C. Arithmetic Expression
• D. Predicate

Answer: (D)

The main idea is recognizing how boolean tests filter data. In SQL, a predicate is a boolean-valued expression that can be true, false, or unknown for a given row. NOT IN and NOT LIKE are classic examples: they perform a test on each row and yield true when the row should be included (and false otherwise). They don’t perform arithmetic calculations, so they aren’t arithmetic expressions. While they often appear inside a WHERE clause as the filtering test, their role is specifically to express a boolean condition, i.e., a predicate. This is why they’re best described as predicates.