SQL Free Guide

Structured Query Language (SQL) is a language for describing and operating on relational databases. A relational database is a database that is capable of representing relationships between different sets of data.

SQL can be used to access and manipulate data in: MySQL, SQL Server, Access, Oracle, Sybase, DB2, and other database systems.


SQL is commonly used in one of two ways:
1. Directly operate on the database management system (DBMS), or
2. Operate on the database management system as part of a larger application


What Can SQL do?
SQL can perform a variety of database related operations, including:
- Executing queries (finding data)
- Retrieving data
- Inserting records
- Updating records
- Deleting records
- Creating new databases
- Creating new tables
- Creating stored procedures
- Creating views
- Setting permissions


What is a Database?
In general, a database consists of one or more tables. Each table is identified by a name and contain rows (also called records) and columns containing data.

SQL is an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard

To build a web site that shows data from a database, you will need:
- Using An RDBMS database program (i.e. MS Access, SQL Server, MySQL)
- Using a server-side scripting language, like PHP or ASP
- Using SQL to get the data you want
- Using HTMLand or CSS


Web Sites and SQL
Most modern websites make use of a RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) to manage their data. The data in the RDBMS is stored in database objects called tables. A table is a collection of related data entries and it consists of rows and columns.

In general, these websites need the following components:
- An RDBMS database program (i.e. MS Access, SQL Server, MySQL)
- A server-side scripting language, like PHP or ASP
- SQL
- HTML
- CSS