Viewing Table Information

Queries retrieve information from the database. All queries include a SELECT statement and can contain additional clauses that determine what data the query returns. Query results are stored in a result table called the result set.

Listing Tables

You can use a stored procedure to list the tables in the demo database. To list the tables, enter

sp_iqtable

in the SQL Statements window.

Using the SELECT Statement

Use a SELECT statement to retrieve data from a database table. To retrieve all rows and columns from the Employees table, enter:

SELECT * FROM Employees

The asterisk in the SQL statement is a wildcard that indicates you want to retrieve all the columns in the table. The Interactive SQL Results window displays these results:

EmployeeID	ManagerID	Surname	GivenName	DepartmentID	...
102	501	Whitney	Fran	100	...
105	501	Cobb	Matthew	100	...
129	902	Chin	Philip	200	...
148	1,293	Jordan	Julie	300	...
160	501	Breault	Robert	100	...
184	1,576	Espinoza	Melissa	400	...
191	703	Bertrand	Jeannette	500	...
195	902	Dill	Marc	200	...
207	1576	Francis	Jane	400	...

The Employees table contains a number of rows organized into columns. Each column has a name, such as Surname or EmployeeID. There is a row for each employee of the company, and each row has a value in each column. For example, the employee with EmployeeID 102 is Fran Whitney, whose manager is ManagerID 501.

You will also see some information in the Interactive SQL Messages window. This information is explained later.

Note: Tablest in this document that display query results may only include some of the data returned by the query. Columns and rows with elliptical values indicate additional query results.

Case Sensitivity

The demo database is case insensitive. This means that case is not considered in comparison and string operations. The Employees table name, for example, is shown starting with an uppercase E, even though the real table name is all lowercase. Sybase IQ databases can be created as case sensitive (the default) or case insensitive in their string comparisons, but are always case insensitive in their use of identifiers.

Note: The examples in this section were created case insensitive, using the CREATE DATABASE qualifier CASE IGNORE. The default is CASE RESPECT, which gives better performance.

You can type select or Select instead of SELECT. Sybase IQ allows you to type keywords in uppercase, lowercase, or any combination of the two. In this manual, uppercase letters are generally used for SQL keywords.