An approach is provided to expand attributes included in an SQL expansion clause into a number of selection statements. In the approach, an expansion clause is identified in within a Structured Query Language (SQL) statement with the SQL statement identifying a relational database table. Column attributes associated with the identified relational database table are compared to attributes included in the identified expansion clause. Columns included in the relational database table are then selected based on the comparison. SQL column selection statements are then generated with each of the generated SQL column selection statements corresponding to one of the selected columns. The generated SQL column selection statements are then included in the SQL statement.