Orders with Selected Statuses — BETWEEN, IN, and LIKE in SQL

The problem

Brightlane's logistics dashboard displays the active order queue for the dispatch team. It should show every order that is either awaiting dispatch (status = 'pending') or currently in transit (status = 'shipped').

Write a query to return the ID and status of each such order.

Assumptions:

The orders table contains every order Brightlane has processed.
Only the two listed statuses qualify; all other status values should be excluded.

Output:

One row per qualifying order, with columns id and status.

Schema · ecommerce 5 tables

categories

id integer

name text

parent_id? integer

products

id integer

name text

category_id integer

price numeric

stock_qty integer

attributes? jsonb

order_items

id integer

order_id integer

product_id integer

quantity integer

unit_price numeric

customers

id integer

name text

email text

city? text

country text

created_at timestamptz

is_active boolean

orders

id integer

customer_id integer

ordered_at timestamptz

status text

total_amount numeric

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Worked solution Try it yourself first

Solution query

SELECT
  id,
  status
FROM
  orders
WHERE
  status IN ('pending', 'shipped')

The shape

IN ('pending', 'shipped') is the compact form of a membership test against a small set of values — the active queue is defined by two statuses, and the parentheses hold both.

Clause by clause

SELECT id, status returns the two columns the dispatch dashboard needs: the order identifier and which of the two active statuses it sits in. Pulling status alongside id lets the team see at a glance whether each row is pending or already shipped.
FROM orders reads the order table.
WHERE status IN ('pending', 'shipped') keeps only the rows whose status matches one of the two values in the parentheses. Every other status — delivered, cancelled, anything else — is dropped.

You practiced using IN to test membership against a list of values. status IN ('pending', 'shipped') reads identically to status = 'pending' OR status = 'shipped' — the recurring shape any time you'd otherwise be chaining equality checks with OR.

Return the ID and status of each such order

The shape

Clause by clause

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