The SQL IN clause allows you to specify discrete values in your SQL WHERE search criteria.

THE SQL IN syntax looks like this:

SELECT Column1, Column2, Column3, … FROM Table1 WHERE Column1 IN (Valu1, Value2, …)

Lets use the EmployeeHours table to illustrate how SQL IN works:

Employee	Date	Hours
John Smith	5/6/2004	8
Allan Babel	5/6/2004	8
Tina Crown	5/6/2004	8
John Smith	5/7/2004	9
Allan Babel	5/7/2004	8
Tina Crown	5/7/2004	10
John Smith	5/8/2004	8
Allan Babel	5/8/2004	8
Tina Crown	5/8/2004	9

Consider the following SQL query using the SQL IN clause:

SELECT * FROM EmployeeHours WHERE Date IN ('5/6/2004', '5/7/2004')

This SQL expression will select only the entries where the column Date has value of '5/6/2004' or '5/7/2004', and you can see the result below:

Employee	Date	Hours
John Smith	5/6/2004	8
Allan Babel	5/6/2004	8
Tina Crown	5/6/2004	8
John Smith	5/7/2004	9
Allan Babel	5/7/2004	8
Tina Crown	5/7/2004	10

We can use the SQL IN statement with another column in our EmployeeHours table:

SELECT * FROM EmployeeHours WHERE Hours IN (9, 10)

The result of the SQL query above will be:

Employee	Date	Hours
John Smith	5/7/2004	9
Tina Crown	5/7/2004	10
Tina Crown	5/8/2004	9