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A SELECT statement retrieves zero or more rows from one or more database tables or database views. In most applications, SELECT is the most commonly used data manipulation language (DML) command. As SQL is a declarative programming language, SELECT queries specify a result set, but do not specify how to calculate it.
Blocks can be nested – i.e., because a block is an executable statement, it can appear in another block wherever an executable statement is allowed. A block can be submitted to an interactive tool (such as SQL*Plus) or embedded within an Oracle Precompiler or OCI program. The interactive tool or program runs the block once.
A query includes a list of columns to include in the final result, normally immediately following the SELECT keyword. An asterisk ("*") can be used to specify that the query should return all columns of the queried tables. SELECT is the most complex statement in SQL, with optional keywords and clauses that include:
SQLite: A VIEW named "dual" that works the same as the Oracle "dual" table can be created as follows: CREATE VIEW dual AS SELECT 'x' AS dummy; SAP HANA has a table called DUMMY that works the same as the Oracle "dual" table. Teradata database does not require a dummy table. Queries like 'select 1 + 1' can be run without a "from" clause/table name.
Oracle Corporation calls these variables "substitution variables". Programmers can use them anywhere in a SQL or PL/SQL statement or in SQL Plus commands. They can be populated by a literal using DEFINE or from the database using the column command.
Major DBMSs, including SQLite, [5] MySQL, [6] Oracle, [7] IBM Db2, [8] Microsoft SQL Server [9] and PostgreSQL [10] support prepared statements. Prepared statements are normally executed through a non-SQL binary protocol for efficiency and protection from SQL injection, but with some DBMSs such as MySQL prepared statements are also available using a SQL syntax for debugging purposes.
If a query contains GROUP BY, rows from the tables are grouped and aggregated. After the aggregating operation, HAVING is applied, filtering out the rows that don't match the specified conditions. Therefore, WHERE applies to data read from tables, and HAVING should only apply to aggregated data, which isn't known in the initial stage of a query.
In SQL, the data manipulation language comprises the SQL-data change statements, [3] which modify stored data but not the schema or database objects. Manipulation of persistent database objects, e.g., tables or stored procedures, via the SQL schema statements, [3] rather than the data stored within them, is considered to be part of a separate data definition language (DDL).