Last updated Nov 17, 2024

Table aliasing involves giving a table in your SQL query a temporary name. This temporary name (aka alias) is often an abbreviation of the full table name. This is particularly useful in queries involving multiple tables because it simplifies the query syntax and makes it easier to read and write.

Let’s revisit the Authors and Books tables and see how table aliasing can be applied.

Here’s how we might perform a join to get the Titles and Authors using aliasing:

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SELECT b.Title, a.AuthorName FROM Books b
JOIN Authors a ON b.AuthorID = a.AuthorID;

1. Books b: Here, Books is aliased as b. This means that in the rest of the query, we can refer to the Books table as b.
2. Authors a: Similarly, Authors is aliased as a. Any reference to the Authors table can now be made using a.
3. b.Title, a.AuthorName: Instead of writing Books.Title and Authors.AuthorName, we use the aliases, making the query more concise.
4. b.AuthorID = a.AuthorID: The JOIN condition uses the aliases as a stand in for the full table names as well.

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