Can you explain the purpose and use of the WHERE operator in SQL queries?

The WHERE operator in SQL is used to filter rows in a query based on a specified condition. It allows selecting only those records from a table that meet certain criteria.

For example, if there is a table Employees, and you want to select employees with a salary greater than 50,000, the query would be:

SELECT * FROM Employees WHERE Salary > 50000;

WHERE can be used with various comparison operators (=, >, <, LIKE, IN, etc.) and logical operators (AND, OR, NOT) to build complex conditions.

Thus, WHERE limits the dataset returned by the query, making the selection more precise and efficient.