ClickHouse is a SQL database, and you query your data by writing the same type of `SELECT` queries you're already familiar with. For example:
```sql theme={null}
SELECT *
FROM helloworld.my_first_table
ORDER BY timestamp
```
View the [SQL Reference](/docs/reference/statements/select/index) for more details on the syntax and available clauses and options.
Notice the response comes back in a nice table format:
```response theme={null}
┌─user_id─┬─message────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────timestamp─┬──metric─┐
│ 102 │ Insert a lot of rows per batch │ 2022-03-21 00:00:00 │ 1.41421 │
│ 102 │ Sort your data based on your commonly-used queries │ 2022-03-22 00:00:00 │ 2.718 │
│ 101 │ Hello, ClickHouse! │ 2022-03-22 14:04:09 │ -1 │
│ 101 │ Granules are the smallest chunks of data read │ 2022-03-22 14:04:14 │ 3.14159 │
└─────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────┘
4 rows in set. Elapsed: 0.008 sec.
```
Add a `FORMAT` clause to specify one of the [many supported output formats of ClickHouse](/docs/reference/formats/index#formats-overview):
```sql theme={null}
SELECT *
FROM helloworld.my_first_table
ORDER BY timestamp
FORMAT TabSeparated
```
In the above query, the output is returned as tab-separated:
```response theme={null}
Query id: 3604df1c-acfd-4117-9c56-f86c69721121
102 Insert a lot of rows per batch 2022-03-21 00:00:00 1.41421
102 Sort your data based on your commonly-used queries 2022-03-22 00:00:00 2.718
101 Hello, ClickHouse! 2022-03-22 14:04:09 -1
101 Granules are the smallest chunks of data read 2022-03-22 14:04:14 3.14159
4 rows in set. Elapsed: 0.005 sec.
```
ClickHouse supports over 70 input and output formats, so between the thousands of functions and all the data formats, you can use ClickHouse to perform some impressive and fast ETL-like data transformations. In fact, you don't even
need a ClickHouse server up and running to transform data - you can use the `clickhouse-local` tool. View the [docs page of `clickhouse-local`](/docs/concepts/features/interfaces/cli) for details.