To read data from database tables into forms, fields, and variables, use the select statement. The select statement takes values from the columns in the specified database table for all rows that satisfy the condition specified in an optional where clause. For example, the following example returns information about the employee whose employee number is 7 from the Personnel database table to the form Deptform:

Variants of the select statement allow you to read data into a variety of query targets, display a submenu to use with the results of the query, or display the rows retrieved by a query for processing one at a time. For a detailed discussion of this statement, see the Select section.