The most basic SQL statement that you can use is the Select statement. This statement will allow you to get a set of records from a database.

Syntax:

SELECT (column names or *) FROM TableName;

The * is a wildcard that allows you to select all columns from a table instead of naming the ones that you want.

Basics of the SELECT Statement

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

EmployeeAddressTable
SSN	FirstName	LastName	Address	City	State
512687458	Joe	Smith	83 First Street	Howard	Ohio
758420012	Mary	Scott	842 Vine Ave.	Losantiville	Ohio
102254896	Sam	Jones	33 Elm St.	Paris	New York
876512563	Sarah	Ackerman	440 U.S. 110	Upton	Michigan

Now, let's say you want to see the address of each employee. Use the SELECT statement, like so:

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

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

First Name	Last Name	Address	City	State
Joe	Smith	83 First Street	Howard	Ohio
Mary	Scott	842 Vine Ave.	Losantiville	Ohio
Sam	Jones	33 Elm St.	Paris	New York
Sarah	Ackerman	440 U.S. 110	Upton	Michigan

To explain what you just did, you asked for the all of data in the EmployeeAddressTable, and specifically, you asked for the columns called FirstName, LastName, Address, City, and State. Note that column names and table names do not have spaces...they must be typed as one word; 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;