Understanding SQL Selection of Columns

The key to understanding how to select a column named "ProductName" from a table named "Products" in SQL lies in knowing the correct syntax for the SQL SELECT statement.

The correct answer, as demonstrated in the JSON quiz question, is SELECT ProductName FROM Products. This statement is telling SQL to find and return all rows and values under the "ProductName" column from the "Products" table.

This command is the very core of SQL, the standard language for dealing with relational databases. SQL statements are used to perform tasks such as update data in a database or retrieve data from a database. The SELECT statement, in particular, is used to select data from a database. The data returned is stored in a result table, also known as the result-set.

Here is a more detailed breakdown of the code:

• SELECT: This is a clause used to indicate that we are about to specify what data we want.
• ProductName: This is the name of the column we are interested in.
• FROM: This is another clause used to indicate we are about to specify where SQL should look for the data.
• Products: This is the name of the table where the database will look for the data.

The statement SELECT Products.ProductName is also correct and termed as a Fully Qualified Naming Convention in SQL. It is especially useful when we need to differentiate between columns of two tables which might have columns with the same name in a JOIN operation.

Always remember that SQL is case insensitive, which means commands like SELECT, FROM, WHERE etc., can be written as select, from, where, with the same effect. However, names of columns and tables, like "ProductName" and "Products", may be case sensitive depending on your RDBMS. MySQL is usually case insensitive, but other RDBMS like PostgreSQL are case sensitive. Best practices generally recommend using the case that is appropriate for the specific RDBMS.