In a SQL query you can reference a name before that name has been declared.
SELECT A.id FROM table_a A;
What is the history of this behavior and how does it relate to programming languages that require you to assign to variables before you can reference them?
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Answer
You are misunderstanding the nature of the SQL language. It is a not a procedural language, but a declarative language. The statement describes what the result should look like, and the database builds the actual query plan accordingly – which, by default, you don’t get to see.
Some databases provide some kind of procedural sub-language, which can be used to write procedures – eg PL/SQL in Oracle. However, what you are showing here is a standard SQL SELECT statement. There is no notion of variable declaration in there. A in the FROM clause is an alias for table_a, aka an identifier, that you can the use to refer to the columns of table, using an expression like <table identifier>.<column name>.