“Hopefully, the inaugural column convinced you that SQL is a
skill you want to have under your belt. In case you missed it,
here’s a quick synopsis: SQL is a database manipulation language,
pure and simple. It is a rich language — it has a number of
commands for managing the database structure itself, powerful
functions, many data types, and other useful features — but at its
most basic level, SQL is simply about three things:
- adding data,
- finding data, and
- changing data.”
“Nothing too mind-bending there! Of course there is plenty of
power under the hood for gurus, but even a newbie can get an
enormous amount of work accomplished with a few simple commands. So
where to begin…? A good first step is choosing a SQL
environment.”
“Before we can talk about SQL commands, we need an environment
that understands SQL commands — basically, we need a relational
database management system, or RDBMS. And you thought I was going
to say we need a database! Well, we do need a database — but
databases (files or filesystems) are created by RDBMS tools like
Oracle, MySQL, and all the other programs that you probably call a
“database.” An RDBMS provides an environment that can be used to
create and manipulate databases as well as the tools to manipulate
the data in the database. One ground rule for aboutSQL — when I
say database, I always mean a relational database. For the record,
there are other models like network, hierarchical, and object, to
name a few, but SQL is all about relational databases.”