MySQL Aliases

Aliases are used to give a table, or a column in a table, a temporary name.

Aliases are often used to make column names more readable.

An alias only exists for the duration of that query.

An alias is created with the AS keyword.

Alias Column Syntax

SELECT column_name AS alias_name
FROM table_name;

Alias Table Syntax

SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name AS alias_name;

Demo Database

In this tutorial we will use the well-known Northwind sample database.

Below is a selection from the "Customers" table:

CustomerID CustomerName ContactName Address City PostalCode Country
2 Ana Trujillo Emparedados y helados Ana Trujillo Avda. de la Constitución 2222 México D.F. 05021 Mexico
3 Antonio Moreno Taquería Antonio Moreno Mataderos 2312 México D.F. 05023 Mexico
4 Around the Horn Thomas Hardy 120 Hanover Sq. London WA1 1DP UK

And a selection from the "Orders" table:

OrderID CustomerID EmployeeID OrderDate ShipperID
10354 58 8 1996-11-14 3
10355 4 6 1996-11-15 1
10356 86 6 1996-11-18 2

Alias for Columns Examples

The following SQL statement creates two aliases, one for the CustomerID column and one for the CustomerName column:

Example

SELECT CustomerID AS ID, CustomerName AS Customer
FROM Customers;

The following SQL statement creates two aliases, one for the CustomerName column and one for the ContactName column. Note: Single or double quotation marks are required if the alias name contains spaces:

Example

SELECT CustomerName AS Customer, ContactName AS "Contact Person"
FROM Customers;

The following SQL statement creates an alias named "Address" that combine four columns (Address, PostalCode, City and Country):

Example

SELECT CustomerName, CONCAT_WS(', ', Address, PostalCode, City, Country) AS Address
FROM Customers;

Alias for Tables Example

The following SQL statement selects all the orders from the customer with CustomerID=4 (Around the Horn). We use the "Customers" and "Orders" tables, and give them the table aliases of "c" and "o" respectively (Here we use aliases to make the SQL shorter):

Example

SELECT o.OrderID, o.OrderDate, c.CustomerName
FROM Customers AS c, Orders AS o
WHERE c.CustomerName='Around the Horn' AND c.CustomerID=o.CustomerID;

The following SQL statement is the same as above, but without aliases:

Example

SELECT Orders.OrderID, Orders.OrderDate, Customers.CustomerName
FROM Customers, Orders
WHERE Customers.CustomerName='Around the Horn' AND Customers.CustomerID=Orders.CustomerID;

Aliases can be useful when:

  • There are more than one table involved in a query
  • Functions are used in the query
  • Column names are big or not very readable
  • Two or more columns are combined together