Simply SQL

Chapter 3 The FROM Clause

In Chapter 2, we broke the SELECT statement down into its various clauses, but looked at each clause only briefly. In this chapter, we’ll begin our more detailed look at the SELECT statement, starting with the FROM clause.

The FROM clause can be simple, and it can also be quite complex. In all cases, though, the important point about the FROM clause is that it produces a tabular structure. This tabular structure is referred to as the result set of the FROM clause. You may also see it referred to as an intermediate result set, an intermediate tabular result set, or an intermediate table. But, no matter whether the SELECT query retrieves data from one table, from many tables, or from other, similar tabular structures, ...