The MySQL SELECT Statement

   The MySQL SELECT Statement

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The SELECT statement is used to select data from a database.

The data returned is stored in a result table, called the result-set.

Syntax:

SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name;

Here, column1, column2, … are the field names of the table you want to select data from. If you want to select all the fields available in the table, use the following syntax:

SELECT * FROM table_name;

Demo Database

Below is a selection from the “Employees” table in the Northwind sample database:

SELECT Columns Example

The following SQL statement selects the “Last Name”, “City” columns from the “Employees” table:

Example

select Last Name,City from Employees;

SELECT * Example

The following SQL statement selects ALL the columns from the “Employees” table:

Example

SELECT * FROM Employees;

The MySQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement

The SELECT STATEMENT statement is used to return only distinct (different) values.

Inside a table, a column often contains many duplicate values; and sometimes you only want to list the different (distinct) values.

SELECT DISTINCT Syntax

SELECT DISTINCT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name;

SELECT Example Without DISTINCT

The following SQL statement selects all (including the duplicates) values from the “City” column in the “Employees” table:

Example

SELECT City FROM Employees;

SELECT DISTINCT Examples

The following SQL statement selects only the DISTINCT values from the “City” column in the “Employees” table:

Example

SELECT DISTINCT City FROM Employees;

The following SQL statement counts and returns the number of different (distinct) cities in the “Employees” table:

Example

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT City) FROM Employees;