“Tired of not knowing what SQL is? Any serious application
developer is going to need to learn some SQL at some point in their
career. And once you start learning it, you’ll use it. A
lot.”
“This column is all about SQL and to get things started, this
time we’ll be focusing on what SQL is and why you’d want to use it.
Trust me, it’ll be fun.
“Back in the old days, the 1970s… IBM was the prime source of
all things computer at that time, and a research group in San Jose
came up with a new database paradigm… System R… Part of the
development of System R was a non-procedural, roughly English-like
language for structuring database queries. This language was dubbed
Structured English Query Language, or SEQUEL. … As more
relational database products were developed, it became clear that a
standard was necessary, so in 1986 the so-called SQL-86 standard
was adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and
early the following year by the International Standards
Organization (ISO). Since 1986, three new versions of the SQL
standard have been developed. SQL-89, SQL-92, and last year’s
SQL-99 (also called SQL3) all add additional functionality to the
specification and tend to be driven by developments in the database
tool community.”