Querying with SELECT

Asking the librarian

Instead of scanning every shelf, you ask the librarian 'show me all mystery novels from the 1990s.' A SELECT query is that request to the database — you describe what you want and it hands back exactly the matching rows.

SELECT what you need

SQL's SELECT statement retrieves data. You list the columns you want (or * for all), the table to read FROM, and an optional WHERE clause to filter which rows come back.

SELECT name
FROM students
WHERE grade = 12;

Lab · Build a query

Choose the column to return: name.
Name the table to read from: students.
Filter to only 12th graders with WHERE grade = 12.

What you should see: The query returns the names of students whose grade equals 12.

What you'll learn

SELECT what you need

Knowledge Check