SQL Select

The SELECT statement is probably the most commonly used in SQL. It simply retrieves data from the database.

Lets have a look at a simple SELECT statement:

SELECT * FROM Individual

This SQL SELECT statement is attempting to retrieve all columns from a table called individuals.

How do we know it is trying to select all columns? Because it is using an asterisk (*). This is a quick way of selecting all columns - it's much easier than writing out the names of all columns (especially if there are a lot of columns).

Of course, this SQL SELECT statement assumes that there is a table called individuals. If there wasn't, an error would be generated.

Lets have a look at the table the statement is trying to select data from:

Because our select statement asks to display all columns and all records, we would see the following:

Select from Multiple Tables

You can select from more than one table at a time. To do this, simply separate each table with a comma. You should also qualify any references to columns by placing the table name in front, separated by a dot.

We have another table called "Occupation", which contains the individual's occupation.

SQL statement

We will select from both the "Individual" table and the "Occupation" table. We will qualify any column names by prefixing them with its table's name and a dot.

SELECT * FROM Individual, Occupation
WHERE Individual.FirstName = 'Homer'

Result

Displaying Less Columns

If you don't need every column to be displayed you can single out just the columns you're interested in. It's good programming practice to do this - the more columns your program has to return, the more it will impact its performance.

To only display those columns you're interested in, simply replace the asterisk (*) with a comma separated list of the column names.

SQL statement

SELECT IndividualId, LastName, UserName FROM Individual
WHERE FirstName = 'Homer'

Result

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