Hello, rank beginner here. Extremely basic question....

[Rymbeld]

Hi,
I've started teaching myself SQL for fun. I read "The Manga Guide to Databases" to get an overview then discovered this site. At any rate, I just started and am curious about the very first set of exercises. When I write:

select *
from empinfo
where age > 40;

I get an error. The correct answer is

select * from empinfo
where age > 40;

Is there a special property of "*" such that it needs to be on the same line as the FROM statement? Because the following two are equivalent and return the same thing, and neither give me an error message:

select age
from empinfo

select age from empinfo

I realise this is probably a silly question, but there you have it.

[SpywareDr]

According to w3schools.com, it looks like the correct SQL SELECT Syntax is:

SELECT column_name,column_name
FROM table_name;

and

SELECT * FROM table_name;

It doesn't explain why, just that's the way it is. <shrug>