5.2. Select

When you want to see information stored inside the database, you will need to use the SELECT command.

The * allows you to select all of the columns.

SELECT *

You will also need to tell the database which table you’re interested in. To do this, you will use the FROM keyword.

SELECT *
FROM table;

To end a query, you will need to use a semicolon ;. This will become important when we combine multiple queries!

Let’s look at an example.

SELECT *
FROM customers;

This query selects all the columns from the customers table and shows us the results.

5.2.1. SELECT columns

We have already seen that we can view all the columns in our database using SELECT *.

But what if we don’t need to see all of the columns? Or what if our database had so many columns that it isn’t practical to see all the columns at once?

Well the SELECT command allows us to specify which columns we are interested in.

SELECT attribute_1, attribute_2, ...
FROM table;

Here is an example which selects only the firstname and lastname columns from our customers table.

SELECT firstname, lastname
FROM customers;