Examples of SQL Statements

Below a few examples are provided to give you an idea of what an SQL statement looks like.

Though they have a specific structure and can perform complex operations,  SQL commands are fairly easy to understand.

For example,

CREATE TABLE Phonebook (
Id char(5),
Name char(50),
Telephone char(11)
);

creates a new table in your database named Phonebook that has three fields, Id, Name, and Telephone, which are characters strings of length 5, 50 , and 11, respectively.

The statement

INSERT INTO Phonebook (Id, Name, Telephone)
VALUES (‘AAAAA’, ‘Joe Smith’, ‘800-555-1212’);

adds the data into the named fields as a new record of the Phonebook table in your database.

The statement

SELECT Name, Telephone
FROM Phonebook 
WHERE Id = ‘AAAAA’;

searches the table Phonebook and finds the Name and Telephone number of the customer whose Id is equal to ‘AAAAA’.

These are, of course, simple statements. Much more complicated databases and queries can be written using SQL, all of which are supported by MySQL.

Much of your database management will be done through the MySQL Control Panel provided in your account administration pages and not by typing in commands such as above. Though not needed, a working undrstanding of how to read and write SQL statements is of great help. There are many books and web sites which teach SQL and have many more examples.  If you plan on doing much database development, it is recommended that you review them.