Sams Teach Yourself MySQL

The SELECT Statement

The first SQL command you will learn, and the one you will use most frequently, is SELECT. In this lesson, you begin by learning how to fetch data records from a single table.

A SELECT statement begins with the SELECT keyword and is used to retrieve information from MySQL database tables. You must specify the table name to fetch data from—using the FROM keyword—and one or more columns that you want to retrieve from that table.

Keywords and Statements

A keyword is a word that is part of the SQL language. In the examples in this book, SQL keywords are always written in capitals, although they are not case sensitive. A SQL statement ...