Much of your skill with SQL or other computer languages is derived from imitating examples. This chapter provides many examples to facilitate your learning process. Initially you are presented with relatively simple examples so that you become comfortable with the basics of the SQL SELECT statement. To prepare you for more difficult examples, two problem-solving guidelines (conceptual evaluation process and critical questions) are presented. The conceptual evaluation process explains the meaning of the SELECT statement through the sequence of operations and intermediate tables that produce the result. The critical questions help you transform a problem statement into a relational database representation in a language such as SQL. These guidelines are used to help formulate and explain the advanced problems presented in the last part of this chapter.