SQL SELECT Select Individual Columns

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Example

SELECT 
    PhoneNumber, 
    Email, 
    PreferredContact 
FROM Customers

This statement will return the columns PhoneNumber, Email, and PreferredContact from all rows of the Customers table. Also the columns will be returned in the sequence in which they appear in the SELECT clause.

The result will be:

PhoneNumberEmailPreferredContact
3347927472[email protected]PHONE
2137921892[email protected]EMAIL
NULL[email protected]EMAIL

If multiple tables are joined together, you can select columns from specific tables by specifying the table name before the column name: [table_name].[column_name]

SELECT 
    Customers.PhoneNumber, 
    Customers.Email, 
    Customers.PreferredContact,
    Orders.Id AS OrderId
FROM 
    Customers
LEFT JOIN 
    Orders ON Orders.CustomerId = Customers.Id

*AS OrderId means that the Id field of Orders table will be returned as a column named OrderId. See selecting with column alias for further information.

To avoid using long table names, you can use table aliases. This mitigates the pain of writing long table names for each field that you select in the joins. If you are performing a self join (a join between two instances of the same table), then you must use table aliases to distinguish your tables. We can write a table alias like Customers c or Customers AS c. Here c works as an alias for Customers and we can select let's say Email like this: c.Email.

SELECT 
    c.PhoneNumber, 
    c.Email, 
    c.PreferredContact,
    o.Id AS OrderId
FROM 
    Customers c
LEFT JOIN 
    Orders o ON o.CustomerId = c.Id


Got any SQL Question?