SQL SELECT AS Alias

The AS keyword is used to give columns or tables a temporary name that can be used to identify that column or table later.

Example

SELECT first_name AS name
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command selects the first_name column from the Customers table. However, the column name is changed to name in the result set.


SQL AS Alias Syntax

The syntax of the SQL AS command is:

SELECT column_1 AS alias_1, 
       column_2 AS alias_2, 
... ...column_n AS alias_n
FROM table_name;

Here,

  • column_1, column_2,...column_n are the table columns
  • alias_1, alias_2,...alias_n are the aliases of the table columns

For example,

SELECT first_name AS name
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command selects the first_name column of Customers. However, the column name will change to name in the result set.

How to use AS Alias in SQL
Example: SQL AS Alias

SQL AS With More Than One Column

We can also use aliases with more than one column.

For example,

SELECT customer_id AS cid, first_name AS name
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command selects customer_id as cid and first_name as name.


SQL AS With Expression

We can combine data from multiple columns and represent it in a single column using the CONCAT() function. For example,

SELECT CONCAT(first_name, ' ', last_name) AS full_name
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command selects first_name and last_name. And, the name of the column will be full_name in the result set.

However, our online SQL editor does not support the CONCAT() function since it uses the SQLite database. In SQLite, we need to use the || operator for concatenation.

For example, here's an equivalent code that will run in our SQL editor.

-- concatenate first_name, empty space, and last_name 
-- into a single column named full_name in the result set

SELECT first_name || ' ' || last_name AS full_name
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command will concatenate the first_name and last_name columns in the result set as full_name.

Notice that we have also concatenated an empty space ' ' between first_name and last_name. This ensures that the data from these columns are separated by a space in the result set.

How to use SQL AS Alias With Expression
Example: SQL AS Alias With Expression

More SQL AS Examples

SQL AS With Functions

It's a common practice to use AS to create aliases when working with functions. For example,

-- AS with functions
SELECT COUNT(*) AS total_customers
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command counts the total number of rows and represents the value as the total_customers attribute.

The result set of this command will have a total_customers column.

SQL Table Alias

The AS keyword can also be used to give temporary names to tables. For example,

-- AS table alias
SELECT cu.first_name, cu.last_name
FROM Customers AS cu;

Here, the SQL command temporarily names the Customers table as cu and selects first_name and last_name from cu.

The result set of this command will have first_name and last_name as columns.

SQL AS With JOIN

We can use AS aliases with table names to make our snippet short and clean while working with JOIN. For example,

SELECT C.customer_id AS cid, C.first_name AS name, O.amount
FROM Customers AS C
JOIN Orders AS O
ON C.customer_id = O.customer_id;

Here, the SQL command temporarily names the Customers table as C and the Orders table as O and selects customer_id from C, first_name from C and amount from O.

The result set of this command will have cid, name and amount columns.

To learn more, visit SQL JOIN.


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