IT Training

Welcome to Lesson 1 of the TSQL Tutorial. In this lesson we will cover select statements. I hope you enjoy the lesson.

Select Statements

The SELECT statement is used to select data from a table.

Usage:

SELECT column(s)
FROM table
Example:
SELECT FirstName, LastName
FROM employees
Results:

FirstName

LastName

Nancy

Davolio

Andrew

Fuller

Janet

Leverling

Margaret

Peacock

Steven

Buchanan

Michael

Suyama

Robert

King

Laura

Callahan

Anne

Dodsworth

 
To select all columns from the "employees" table, use a * symbol instead of column names. 
SELECT * 
FROM employees

Results:

EmployeeID

LastName

FirstName

Title

BirthDate

HireDate

Address

City

1

Davolio

Nancy

Sales Representative

12/8/1948

5/1/1992

507 - 20th Ave. E.

Seattle

2

Fuller

Andrew

Vice President, Sales

2/19/1952

8/14/1992

908 W. Capital Way

Tacoma

3

Leverling

Janet

Sales Representative

8/30/1963

4/1/1992

722 Moss Bay Blvd.

Kirkland

4

Peacock

Margaret

Sales Representative

9/19/1937

5/3/1993

4110 Old Redmond Rd.

Redmond

5

Buchanan

Steven

Sales Manager

3/4/1955

10/17/1993

14 Garrett Hill

London

6

Suyama

Michael

Sales Representative

7/2/1963

10/17/1993

123 Miner Rd.

London

7

King

Robert

Sales Representative

5/29/1960

1/2/1994

Edgeham Hollow

London

8

Callahan

Laura

Inside Sales Coordinator

1/9/1958

3/5/1994

4726 - 11th Ave. N.E.

Seattle

9

Dodsworth

Anne

Sales Representative

1/27/1966

11/15/1994

7 Houndstooth Rd.

London

In the above example SELECT and FROM are reserved SQL commands.  The * (asterisk) is a special wildcard character that specifies that we want all columns to be returned.  Employees is simply the name of the table we are selecting from.