Selecting data

You have inserted and updated data in the tables. Now it is time to learn how to retrieve information from the database. In this section, we will discuss how to retrieve data from the sample employee database that we have created.

There are many things that you can do with SELECT. The most common use cases will be discussed in this section. For more details on syntax and other use cases, refer to https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/select.html.

How to do it...

Select all data from the departments table of the employee database. You can use an asterisk (*) to select all columns from a table. It is not recommended to use it, you should always select only the data you need:

mysql> SELECT * FROM departments;
+---------+--------------------+
| dept_no | dept_name          |
+---------+--------------------+
| d009    | Customer Service   |
| d005    | Development        |
| d002    | Finance            |
| d003    | Human Resources    |
| d001    | Marketing          |
| d004...