Basics of the SELECT Statement

In a relational database, data is stored in tables. An example table would relate Inland Revenue Number, Name, and Address:

If you want to see the address of each employee. Use the SELECT statement:

SELECT FirstName, LastName, Address, City, Country
FROM EmployeeAddressTable;

The following is the results of your query of the database:

Specifically, you asked for the columns called FirstName, LastName, Address, City, and Country. Note that column names and table names do not have spaces...following Reddicks naming conventions; and that the statement ends with a semicolon (;). The general form for a SELECT statement, retrieving all of the rows in the table is:

SELECT ColumnName, ColumnName, ...
FROM TableName;

To get all columns of a table without typing all column names, use:

SELECT * FROM TableName;

The star representing the common wildcard for everything! Unfortunately each database management system (DBMS) and database software has different methods for logging in to the database and entering SQL commands.