SQL and SQL Server

SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standard language used for querying, updating, and managing relational databases, and lately SQL has become the de facto standard "language" for accessing relational databases. SQL is not really as much of a language as it is a database query tool. In this book, we concentrate on learning SQL using SQL Server .

SQL allows us to define a relational databasecreate and modify tables (in this sense, SQL is a data definition language, or DDL). SQL also allows us to tell SQL Server which information we want to select (retrieve), insert, update, or delete. That is, SQL also allows us to query the relational database in a most flexible way, as well as to change the stored data (and in this sense, SQL is a data manipulation language, or DML).

The book is targeted at SQL Server users on the Windows operating system, but is easily adaptable to other platforms.