Data Manipulation Language (DML) is a vocabulary used to retrieve and work with data in SQL Server 2017 and SQL Database. Most also work in SQL Data Warehouse and PDW (review each individual statement for details). Use these statements to add, modify, query, or remove data from a SQL Server 2017 SQL Server database.
The following table lists the DML statements that SQL Server uses.
The following table lists the clauses that are used in multiple DML statements or clauses.
| Clause | Can be used in these statements |
|---|---|
| FROM (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, SELECT, UPDATE |
| Hints (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE |
| OPTION Clause (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, SELECT, UPDATE |
| OUTPUT Clause (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, INSERT, MERGE, UPDATE |
| Search Condition (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, MERGE, SELECT, UPDATE |
| Table Value Constructor (Transact-SQL) | FROM, INSERT, MERGE |
| TOP (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, INSERT, MERGE, SELECT, UPDATE |
| WHERE (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, SELECT, UPDATE, MATCH |
| WITH common_table_expression (Transact-SQL) | DELETE, INSERT, MERGE, SELECT, UPDATE |