What Is a Subquery?

A subquery is a query embedded within the WHERE clause of another query to further restrict data returned by the query. A subquery is a query within another query, also known as a nested query. A subquery is used to return data that will be used in the main query as a condition to further restrict the data to be retrieved. Subqueries are used with the SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements.

A subquery can be used in some cases in place of a join operation by indirectly linking data between the tables based on one or more conditions. When a subquery is used in a query, the subquery is resolved first, and then the main query is resolved according to the condition(s) as resolved by the subquery. The results of the subquery ...

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