The WHERE statement for SQL

WHERE clause

To conditionally select data from a table, you can add a WHERE clause to the SELECT statement.

Grammar

SELECT column name from table name WHERE column operator value

The following operators can be used in the WHERE clause:

operator	Description
=	Equals
<>	Not equal to
>	Greater than
<	Less than
>=	Greater than or equal
<=	Less than or equal
Between	Within a range
Like	Search for a pattern

Notes: In some versions of SQL, the operator <> can be written as! =.

Using the WHERE clause

If you want to select only people who live in the city "Beijing", we need to add a WHERE clause to the SELECT statement:

WHERE City=‘Beijing‘

"Persons" table City Year

LastName	FirstName	Address
Adams	John	Oxford Street	London	1970
Bush	George	Fifth Avenue	New York	1975
Carter	Thomas	Changan Street	Beijing	1980
Gates	Bill	Xuanwumen 10	Beijing	1985

Results: City Year

LastName	FirstName	Address
Carter	Thomas	Changan Street	Beijing	1980
Gates	Bill	Xuanwumen 10	Beijing	1985

Use of quotation marks

Note that we use single quotes around the condition values in the example.

SQL uses single quotation marks to wrap text values (most database systems also accept double quotes). If it is a numeric value , do not use quotation marks.

Text value:

FirstName=‘Bush‘FirstName=Bush

Numerical:

Year>1965Year>‘1965‘

The WHERE statement for SQL