Practical SQL Handbook, The: Using SQL Variants, Fourth Edition

Choosing Specific Columns

To select a subset of the columns in a table, as some of the previous examples have demonstrated, simply list the columns you want to see in the SELECT list:

SELECT column_name[, column_name]...
FROM table_list

Separate each column name from the following column name with a comma.

Rearranging Result Columns

The order in which columns appear in a display is completely up to you: Use the SELECT list to order them in any way that makes sense.

Following are two examples. Both of them find and display the publisher names and identification numbers from all three of the rows in the publishers table. The first one prints pub_id first, followed by pub_name. The second reverses that order. The information is exactly the same; ...