SQL is an international standard (ISO), but you will find many differences between implementations. This guide uses MySQL as an example. If you use one of the many other Relational Database Management Systems (DBMS) you'll need to check the manual for equivalent commands and syntax.
The Select clause is normally used to determine which columns of the data you want to show in the results. There are also options you can use to show data that is not a table column.
This example shows two columns selected from the "student" table, and two calculated columns. The first of the calculated columns is a meaningless number, and the other is the system date.
```sql
select studentID, FullName, 3+2 as five, now() as currentDate
Compare this result to the above SQL statement to follow this logic.
Rows will be presented that:
* Have Student IDs between 1 and 5 (inclusive)
* or studentID = 8
* or have "Maxmimo" in the name
The following example is similar, but it further specifies that if any of the students have certain SAT scores (1000, 1400), they will not be presented:
Order By gives us a way to sort the result set by one or more of the items in the SELECT section. Here is the same list as above, but sorted by the student's Full Name. The default sort order is ascending (ASC), but to sort in the opposite order (descending) you use DESC, as in the example below:
This SQL statement answers the question: "which candidates recieved the largest number of contributions (not $ amount, but count (\*)) in 2016, but only those who had more than 80 contributions?"
Ordering this data set in a descending (DESC) order places the candidates with the largest number of contributions at the top of the list.
*As with all of these SQL things there is MUCH MORE to them than what's in this introductory guide. I hope this at least gives you enough to get started. Please see the manual for your database manager and have fun trying different options yourself.*