Basic SELECT Statements

Now that you understand SQL’s structure, it's time to focus on its most commonly used command: SELECT.

The SELECT statement is used to read data from a table. You specify the columns you want, and SQL returns only that information.

Selecting Specific Columns

Here’s a basic example:

SELECT name, age FROM students;

‍This query retrieves only the name and age columns from the students table.

Selecting All Columns

If you want to retrieve all columns from a table, you can use the asterisk * symbol:

SELECT * FROM students;

This returns every column for every row in the table.