For the last few months, I've been learning SQL and this post documents a snippet of what I have been doing. SQL, which stands for Structured Query Language, is special-built purpose program designed for managing data held in a Relational Database Management System (RDMS).
Syntactically SQL is very straight forward. SELECT is an essential keyword and is equivalent to WRITE or PRINT in other programming language. Coding with SQL is also intuitive in its use of key words e.g. WHERE is a conditional keyword, ORDER BY sorts, INSERT puts data into a table and UPDATE updates the data in a table.
One of the simplest code you can write is SELECT 3. This code outputs 3. A basic code like SELECT * FROM table1
outputs table1, the * symbol indicates you want all table1 data printed.
There are a few tools and resources I am using:
Syntactically SQL is very straight forward. SELECT is an essential keyword and is equivalent to WRITE or PRINT in other programming language. Coding with SQL is also intuitive in its use of key words e.g. WHERE is a conditional keyword, ORDER BY sorts, INSERT puts data into a table and UPDATE updates the data in a table.
One of the simplest code you can write is SELECT 3. This code outputs 3. A basic code like SELECT * FROM table1
outputs table1, the * symbol indicates you want all table1 data printed.
There are a few tools and resources I am using:
- Online courses on Lynda.com to learn the fundamentals
- Microsoft Access to visualize relationships between tables (relational database)
- SQL app (GalaXQL) and MySQL to gain practical experience