oracle : select from 2 select statements meaning

Question

I came across an if then else statement in oracle, but I am not sure what is the purpose of the two select count(*) statements. Can someone help me with that. I need to undestand this to re-write the same in t-sql. Thanks. Here's the code:

BEGIN
      IF (nEL_ID > 0) THEN
        select upperMatched||valueMatched INTO sResult
        from
           (
            select count(*) as upperMatched
              from HSIP.FY_ORT_VALUES ov
            where ov.FY = nFY and OV.EL_ID = nEL_ID
              and upper(OV.VAL_DESCRIPTION) = upper(sRESPONSE_STRING)
           )um,
           (
            select count(*) as valueMatched
              from HSIP.FY_ORT_VALUES ov
            where ov.fy = nfy and OV.EL_ID = nEL_ID
              and OV.VAL_DESCRIPTION = sRESPONSE_STRING
           )lm;
      ELSE
           sResult := '00';
      END IF;
       RETURN sResult;

SQL Server:

CREATE FUNCTION [hsip].[getMatchedFlags]
(
    @nFY NUMERIC(4,0) = 0,
    @sResponse_String varchar(250),
    @nEL_ID NUMERIC(5,0) = 0
)

RETURNS @sResult TABLE(FY NUMERIC(4,0),
Response_string  varchar(250),
el_id  numeric(5,0)) 

AS
BEGIN

insert into @sResult

--select * from (select case
SELECT CASE 
when (@nEL_ID>0) then 

SELECT(CONCAT(

 (select count(*) as upperMatched
              from HSIP.FY_ORT_VALUES ov
              where ov.FY = @nFY and OV.EL_ID = @nEL_ID
              and upper(OV.VAL_DESCRIPTION) = upper(@sRESPONSE_STRING)),

(SELECT COUNT(*) AS valueMatched
FROM hsip.FY_ORT_VALUES OV
WHERE OV.FY= @nFY AND OV.el_id= @nEL_ID
AND OV.VAL_DESCRIPTION= @sResponse_String))

ELSE

SET @SRESULT= 0;
return;

Answer 1

um and lm are scalar subqueries (each returns a single row with exactly one column; in this case, the single value returned is a number, the count of something or another).

SQL (or at least Oracle SQL) allows you to use the result of scalar queries as expressions - in this case, as plain numbers. The "IF" branch sets the result sResult as the concatenation of these two numbers (after converting them implicitly to strings).

That doesn't make much sense to me; if the first count is 399 and the second is 1, then the result will be the string '3991' (not a number, but a string). By the way, if the first count was 39 and the second 91, you would get exactly the same result.

Note - as discussed in comments below this answer, I missed the main point of the original question. xQbert explains the meaning of the counts themselves in a Comment to the original question.