The basic form of the SQL SELECT statement is called a mapping or SELECT-FROM-WHERE block.

SELECT <attr list> FROM <table list> WHERE <condition>
  • <attr list> is a list of attribute names whose values are to be retrieved by the query
  • <table list> is a list of the relation names required to process the query
  • <condition> is a conditional boolean expression that identifies the tuples to be retrieved by the query. We have access to basic logical operators in the <condition>: =, <, <=, >, >=, <>, !=, AND, OR, NOT, IS NULL, and IS NOT NULL.