Using Aliases in Select Queries

Aliases are useful for:

• Making your query results easier to read
• Can make your query easier to read especially when you have multiple joins
• Giving meaningful names to columns
• Giving names to aggregated columns

There is some debate over how aliases should be created.  Some prefer using = and other AS.  My preference is to use AS because this is consistent with how other aliases work in SQL Server such as common table expressions.  The methods are:

• AliasName = ColumnName 
• ColumnName AS AliasName

Here are some examples of how to use aliases in your queries:

First using an alias to give a column another name:

This query will give you the following results, notice the salesorderid has the label OrderNo and the TotalDue column has the label OrderValue:

The following query uses aliases for the table names; this makes it easy to see which table each column is coming from as well as saving on typing:

 









Finally here's a simple example of using an alias to name an aggregated column otherwise it wouldn't have a column heading: