Bitwise operators in SQL are used to perform operations on binary representations of integers.
Common bitwise operators include:

• & (Bitwise AND)
• | (Bitwise OR)
• ^ (Bitwise XOR)
• ~ (Bitwise NOT)
• << (Left Shift)
• >> (Right Shift)

The Bitwise AND operator compares each bit of two integers and returns 1 only if both bits are 1.
Example:

SELECT 5 & 3 AS Result;

Binary of 5 → 101
Binary of 3 → 011
Result → 001 (which equals 1)

• Bitwise OR (|) returns 1 if either bit is 1.
• Bitwise XOR (^) returns 1 only if exactly one bit is 1.

SELECT 5 | 3 AS OR_Result, 5 ^ 3 AS XOR_Result;

The Bitwise NOT (~) operator inverts each bit in a number — turning 1 into 0 and 0 into 1.

Binary of 5 → 00000101
Result → 11111010 (which represents -6 in signed integer form)

SELECT 5 | 3 AS OR_Result, 5 ^ 3 AS XOR_Result;
SELECT ~5 AS Result;

Bitwise operators are used in:

• Flag-based filtering (e.g., checking multiple status flags in a single column)
• Permission systems (e.g., user roles represented as bit masks)
• Performance optimization for compact storage and fast filtering