Queries

**APPLIES TO:** ![yes](media/yes.png)SQL Server (starting with 2008) ![yes](media/yes.png)Azure SQL Database ![yes](media/yes.png)Azure SQL Data Warehouse ![yes](media/yes.png)Parallel Data Warehouse

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.

In This Section

The following table lists the DML statements that SQL Server uses.

BULK INSERT (Transact-SQL) SELECT (Transact-SQL)
DELETE (Transact-SQL) UPDATE (Transact-SQL)
INSERT (Transact-SQL) UPDATETEXT (Transact-SQL)
MERGE (Transact-SQL) WRITETEXT (Transact-SQL)
READTEXT (Transact-SQL)

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