Structured Query Language (SQL)

CIW Course in a Nutshell

Structured Query Language

SQL, pronounced Ess-Cue-El and not See-Quell as is often mis-used, including by myself, is a powerful, industry-standard, database query language.

SQL is a standard laid down by The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Standards Organisation (ISO). The standard upon which Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 was based is ANSI-92 and was published in 1992.

While I shan't pretend to be an expert in the subject, I have been using SQL for quite a few years, and so I would consider myself an adept amateur with the topic. I began with Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, quickly moved to version 7.0, and then gravitated to SQL Server 2000. More recently I have been using MySQL

What I have set out to do here, is expand on the very basic grounding given in the CIW course, as it is likely that many Webmasters will use this language, particularly with MySQL which is provided with most hosting packages.

I use MySQL on this site, but it only requires the most basic of select queries to deliver the results I require. When I started redesigning the site I used several linked tables to store the banners on each of the pages. This worked fine, but I decided to simplify it and use just a single table and do all the relational work with the multiple tables kept offline.

I have a number of other projects in the pipeline and these will also, in all likelihood, use single table queries, so no rocket science involved here.

The information contained in these pages will not make you an expert SQL programmer, just as I am no expert, but it should give you a good starting point and allow you to produce perfectly functional and acceptable queries.