Database Fundamentals #23: Filtering Data

If you've been reading these Database Fundamentals posts, you've already seen the WHERE clause because of your use of it when manipulating data with DELETE and UPDATE statements. It's also been used several times earlier in this series to limit the values returned from a SELECT statement.

The primary places where people run into trouble with T-SQL is in the JOIN criteria and the WHERE clause criteria. This occurs because they don't understand well enough what the filters and operators they're using will do. They end up returning too much data because they didn't us the WHERE clause or misapplied it. They also filter too much data out.