SQL alias for SELECT statement

You can do this using the WITH clause of the SELECT statement:

;
WITH my_select As (SELECT ... FROM ...) 
SELECT * FROM foo
WHERE id IN (SELECT MAX(id) FROM my_select GROUP BY name)

That's the ANSI/ISO SQL Syntax. I know that SQL Server, Oracle and DB2 support it. Not sure about the others...

Not sure exactly what you try to denote with that syntax, but in almost all RDBMS-es you can use a subquery in the FROM clause (sometimes called an "inline-view"):

SELECT..
FROM (
     SELECT ...
     FROM ...
     ) my_select
WHERE ...

In advanced "enterprise" RDBMS-es (like oracle, SQL Server, postgresql) you can use common table expressions which allows you to refer to a query by name and reuse it even multiple times:

-- Define the CTE expression name and column list.
WITH Sales_CTE (SalesPersonID, SalesOrderID, SalesYear)
AS
-- Define the CTE query.
(
    SELECT SalesPersonID, SalesOrderID, YEAR(OrderDate) AS SalesYear
    FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
    WHERE SalesPersonID IS NOT NULL
)
-- Define the outer query referencing the CTE name.
SELECT SalesPersonID, COUNT(SalesOrderID) AS TotalSales, SalesYear
FROM Sales_CTE
GROUP BY SalesYear, SalesPersonID
ORDER BY SalesPersonID, SalesYear;

(example from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190766(v=sql.105).aspx)