The basic or the first statement in T-SQL is the 'SELECT' statement.  It is used to retrieve records from the database. It consists of 2 parts, the columns that you are selecting as well as from which table(s).

The SELECT Statement

The 'SELECT" statement helps you select data from one or more tables. When you want to retrieve all the columns of a table, you can use the '*' clause in your 'SELECT' statement.

SQL SELECT Syntax

The SELECT Statement Example

The 'Employees' tables contains the following columns and their respective data type as shown below.

Table Name :

Employees

Column Name	Data Type
EmployeeID	smallint	Not Null
EmployeeName	varchar(50)	Not Null
DateOfBirth	smalldatetime	Not Null
PhoneNo	nchar(10)	Allows Null
City	varchar(50)	Allows Null
Salary	decimal(5, 2)	Allows Null

The "Select * from Employees" statement displays all the columns and data from the 'EMPLOYEES' table as shown below.



The above 'SELECT" statement also brings out all the columns and data from the 'EMPLOYEES' table as you have explicitly called every column. This type of explicit calling is preferred to use of '*' in 'SELECT' statements, the reason we shall see later on as we progress.


SQL is NOT case sensitive.You can write it as 'SELECT' or 'select'. It operates in the same manner.