ASA Getting Started
Selecting Data from Database Tables
All interaction between applications (clients) and database servers is carried out by sending SQL statements to the database server, which returns information to the client.
The SELECT statement retrieves information from a database for use by the client application. SELECT statements are also called queries. The information is delivered to the client in the form of a result set. The client application can then process the result set. For example, Interactive SQL displays the result set in the Results pane. Result sets consist of a set of rows, just like tables in the database.
SELECT statements can become highly complex in applications retrieving very specific information from many tables. This chapter uses only simple SELECT statements: more advanced queries are described in later tutorials.
For the full syntax of the SELECT statement, see SELECT statement.