---
title: Overview
description: The SQL search API accepts SQL in a JSON document, executes it, and returns the results. For example: Which returns: 
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/query-languages/sql/sql-rest-overview
products:
  - Elasticsearch
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available
---

# Overview
The [SQL search API](https://www.elastic.co/docs/api/doc/elasticsearch/operation/operation-sql-query) accepts SQL in a JSON document, executes it, and returns the results. For example:
```json

{
  "query": "SELECT * FROM library ORDER BY page_count DESC LIMIT 5"
}
```

Which returns:
```text
     author      |        name        |  page_count   | release_date
-----------------+--------------------+---------------+------------------------
Peter F. Hamilton|Pandora's Star      |768            |2004-03-02T00:00:00.000Z
Vernor Vinge     |A Fire Upon the Deep|613            |1992-06-01T00:00:00.000Z
Frank Herbert    |Dune                |604            |1965-06-01T00:00:00.000Z
Alastair Reynolds|Revelation Space    |585            |2000-03-15T00:00:00.000Z
James S.A. Corey |Leviathan Wakes     |561            |2011-06-02T00:00:00.000Z
```

<admonition title="Using Kibana Console">
  If you are using [Kibana Console](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/explore-analyze/query-filter/tools/console) (which is highly recommended), take advantage of the triple quotes `"""` when creating the query. This not only automatically escapes double quotes (`"`) inside the query string but also support multi-line as shown below:![console triple quotes](https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/query-languages/images/elasticsearch-reference-console-triple-quotes.png)
</admonition>