MariaDB Crash Course

4. Retrieving Data

In this chapter, you learn how to use the SELECT statement to retrieve one or more columns of data from a table.

The SELECT Statement

As explained in Chapter 1, “Understanding SQL,” SQL statements are made up of plain English terms called keywords. 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 information—what you want to select, and from where you want to select it.

Retrieving Individual Columns

We start with a simple SQL SELECT statement, as follows:

Input

SELECT prod_name FROM products;