The SELECT Statement

The SELECT Statement

As explained in Chapter 1, "Understanding SQL," SQL statements are made up of plain English terms. These terms are called keywords, and every SQL statement is made up of one or more keywords. The SQL statement you'll probably use most frequently is the SELECT statement. Its purpose is to retrieve information from one or more tables.

To use SELECT to retrieve table data you must, at a minimum, specify two pieces of informationwhat you want to select, and from where you want to select it.