The SQL SELECT Statement

The SELECT statement is used to select data from a table. The tabular result is stored in a result table (called the result-set).

Syntax

SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name

Note: SQL statements are not case sensitive. SELECT is the same as select.

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SQL SELECT Example

To select the content of columns named "LastName" and "FirstName", from the database table called "Persons", use a SELECT statement like this:

SELECT LastName,FirstName FROM Persons

The database table "Persons":

LastName	FirstName	Address	City
Hansen	Ola	Timoteivn 10	Sandnes
Svendson	Tove	Borgvn 23	Sandnes
Pettersen	Kari	Storgt 20	Stavanger

The result

LastName	FirstName
Hansen	Ola
Svendson	Tove
Pettersen	Kari

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Select All Columns

To select all columns from the "Persons" table, use a * symbol instead of column names, like this:

SELECT * FROM Persons

Result

LastName	FirstName	Address	City
Hansen	Ola	Timoteivn 10	Sandnes
Svendson	Tove	Borgvn 23	Sandnes
Pettersen	Kari	Storgt 20	Stavanger

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The Result Set

The result from a SQL query is stored in a result-set. Most database software systems allow navigation of the result set with programming functions, like: Move-To-First-Record, Get-Record-Content, Move-To-Next-Record, etc.

Programming functions like these are not a part of this tutorial. To learn about accessing data with function calls, please visit our ADO tutorial.

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Semicolon after SQL Statements?

Semicolon is the standard way to separate each SQL statement in database systems that allow more than one SQL statement to be executed in the same call to the server.

Some SQL tutorials end each SQL statement with a semicolon. Is this necessary? We are using MS Access and SQL Server 2000 and we do not have to put a semicolon after each SQL statement, but some database programs force you to use it.

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The SELECT DISTINCT Statement

The DISTINCT keyword is used to return only distinct (different) values.

The SELECT statement returns information from table columns. But what if we only want to select distinct elements?

With SQL, all we need to do is to add a DISTINCT keyword to the SELECT statement:

Syntax

SELECT DISTINCT column_name(s) FROM table_name

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Using the DISTINCT keyword

To select ALL values from the column named "Company" we use a SELECT statement like this:

SELECT Company FROM Orders

"Orders" table

Company	OrderNumber
Sega	3412
W3Schools	2312
Trio	4678
W3Schools	6798

Result

Company
Sega
W3Schools
Trio
W3Schools

Note that "W3Schools" is listed twice in the result-set.

To select only DIFFERENT values from the column named "Company" we use a SELECT DISTINCT statement like this:

SELECT DISTINCT Company FROM Orders

Result:

Company
Sega
W3Schools
Trio

Now "W3Schools" is listed only once in the result-set.