Retrieving Data from Tables

Learn about retrieving data from tables in PostgreSQL.

The SELECT query

The basic unit of data storage in PostgreSQL is tables. A table consists of a collection of rows, and each row has a set of columns containing that row’s data. To get data out of a table, we use the SELECT statement.

The most basic form of the SELECT statement looks like this:

SELECT
*
FROM
<table_name>;
The most basic SELECT statement

It will select all of the columns in the table_name table. The wildcard character * represents all the columns.

We can specify the columns to be selected:

SELECT
<field_1>,
<field_2>,
...
<field_n>
FROM
<table_name>
WHERE
<condition>
The syntax of the SELECT statement

Here, <field_1>, <field_2>, ... represents the names of the columns we want to select and <table_name> is the name of the table from which we want to fetch data.

We can use the SELECT statement as below to retrieve data from a table, Employee, containing four ...