SQL CREATE TABLE Statement

The CREATE TABLE statement is used to create a table in a database.

Tables are divided into rows and columns. Each row represents one piece of data, and each column can be thought of as representing a component of that piece of data. So, for example, if we have a table for recording customer information, then the columns may include information such as First Name, Last Name, Address, City, Country, Birth Date, and so on. As a result, when we specify a table, we include the column headers and the data types for that particular column.

CREATE TABLE table_name
(
column_name1 data_type,
column_name2 data_type,
column_name3 data_type,
....
)

CREATE TABLE Example

CREATE TABLE customer
(First_Name char(50),
Last_Name char(50),
Address char(50),
City char(50),
Country char(25),
Birth_Date date)

Sometimes, we want to provide a default value for each column. A default value is used when you do not specify a column's value when inserting data into the table. To specify a default value, add "Default [value]" after the data type declaration. In the above example, if we want to default column "Address" to "Unknown" and City to "Mumbai", we would type in

CREATE TABLE customer
(First_Name char(50),
Last_Name char(50),
Address char(50) default 'Unknown',
City char(50) default 'Mumbai',
Country char(25),
Birth_Date date)