Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Development Tools Database Foundations Reading Data from Databases with SQL Retrieving a Result Set

In what situation would I use the long form syntax?

i.e using:

SELECT movies.year FROM movies;

rather than:

SELECT year FROM movies;

1 Answer

Once you get into JOINs you'll run into situations where you may have the same column in two different tables. A common example of this would be something like a created_at timestamp or an id. In those cases you'll need to use the long form to be explicit about what table and column you're referencing.

Thanks!