The amazing Select Statement

The Amazing Select Statement: A brief Introduction The amazing Select Command: Learn it right here, right now First learn by example ...and then practice it! The amazing Select Command: Learn it right here, right now Engineers (like me) have been traditionally confined to working with Spreadsheets when it comes to data manipulation and we have often regarded databases as the realm of programmers and analysts! However, a little bit of reading and we realize that databases have a lot to offer over and above spreadsheets. In fact, although you can do just about anything with a spreadsheet, you can also do just about anything with a database too! And databases offer you Security, Maintainability, Capacity, Multiple Users, Networkability and Connect Ability, and superior Data Entry capabilities! That's a lot of plusses in one sentence! But how can we get started? Well, the language of databases is SQL and unlike languages like VB and C, you can get results very quickly without having to know a large number of base commands. In fact, you can just about do 95% of all your data retrievals with just one command. The magical SELECT command. Let's take a quick look at it now. Lets learn the command with an example! On the right is a table called "logtable". (It is a database table from our jLogBook application) You can see it has columns (like area, logdatetime, message) and rows, one for each operator entry. Now lets say we want to see the columns Area, Stream, Message for the area called "heat" and we want the rows ordered by stream. Here is the command we would use: Select area, stream, message (these are the columns we want to see) from logtable where area = 'heat' (we only want records where the area ='heat') order by stream (and order the records by the values in the column stream.) And, in a flash, here is the resulting data! (also shown on the right.) Hardly rocket science, and that is exactly the point. With a simple command like this, we have got exactly what we want, in the format we want. But like all languages, the only way to learn is to practice. That is why we recommend you get an application like St James Software's jWorkBook and go through the Tutorial. It starts with the Select command and brings you up to speed very quickly. Very soon you will be positively dangerous and you will be quite happy to extend your area of comfort into databases for that next application. View the on-line Demo Please send me more information Click here to view our Price List.