The following example shows how using a CASE expression can result in significantly enhanced performance by eliminating multiple passes over the data. Without using CASE, you would have to perform multiple queries for each region and then consolidate the answers to the individual queries in a final report.
SELECT SalesMonth, SUM(CASE WHEN Region='NE' THEN Revenue ELSE 0 END), SUM(CASE WHEN Region='NW' THEN Revenue ELSE 0 END), SUM(CASE WHEN Region LIKE 'N%' THEN Revenue ELSE 0 END) AS NorthernExposure, NorthernExposure/SUM(Revenue), SUM(Revenue) FROM Sales GROUP BY SalesMonth;