title: using WHERE clause in Rails 3 active record query
body: <p>I'm new to rails and I'm trying to use the where method to retrieve a record from my data table.  However, using it doesn't seem to return any results.</p>
  
  <pre><code>employee = Employee.where("first_name = ?", "bill")  #doesn't work
  
  employee = Employee.where(:first_name =&gt; "bill")  #doesn't work
  
  employee = Employee.find_by_first_name("bill")  #works
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm testing the results by printing <code>employee.first_name</code> and like I said the first two don't return anything whereas the third one returns "bill".  What's going on here?</p>