SQL

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This article is about the database language. For the specific Microsoft database server, see SQL
Server. For the airport with IATA code SQL, see San Carlos Airport.
SQL
Paradigm Multi-paradigm
Appeared
1974
in
Designed Donald D. Chamberlin
by Raymond F. Boyce
Developer IBM
Stable
SQL:2008 (2008)
release
Typing
Static, strong
discipline
Major
implement Many
ations
SQL-86, SQL-89, SQL-92, SQL:1999,
Dialects
SQL:2003, SQL:2008
Influenced
Datalog
by
Agena, CQL, LINQ, Windows
Influenced
PowerShell[1]
OS Cross-platform
Usual file
.sql
extensions
ISO/IEC 9075-1:2008: Information
technology – Database languages – SQL
Website – Part 1: Framework (SQL/Framework),
http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.h
tm?csnumber=45498
SQL

Structured Query Language

Filename extension .sql
Internet media type application/x-sql
Developed by IBM
Initial release 1986
Latest release SQL:2008 / 2008; 2 years ago
Type of format Database
Standard(s) ISO/IEC 9075
Open format? Yes
[2]
Website

SQL ( /ˌsiːkwəl/, often /ˈɛs kjuː ˈɛl/),[3] often referred to as Structured Query Language,
is a database computer language designed for managing data in relational database management
systems (RDBMS), and originally based upon relational algebra and calculus.[4] Its scope
includes data insert, query, update and delete, schema creation and modification, and data access
control. SQL was one of the first commercial languages for Edgar F. Codd's relational model, as
described in his influential 1970 paper, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data
Banks".[5] Despite not adhering to the relational model as described by Codd, it became the most
widely used database language.[6][7]

Contents
 1 History
 2 Language elements
o 2.1 Queries
 2.1.1 Null and three-valued logic (3VL)
o 2.2 Data manipulation
o 2.3 Transaction controls
o 2.4 Data definition
o 2.5 Data types
 2.5.1 Character strings
 2.5.2 Bit strings
 2.5.3 Numbers
 2.5.4 Date and time
o 2.6 Data control
o 2.7 Procedural extensions
 3 Criticism
o 3.1 Cross-vendor portability
 4 Standardization
o 4.1 Standard structure
 5 Alternatives
 6 See also
 7 References
 8 External links

[edit] History
SQL was developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce in the early
1970s. This version, initially called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language), was
designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original quasi-relational database
management system, System R, which a group at IBM San Jose Research Laboratory had
developed during the 1970s.[8] The acronym SEQUEL was later changed to SQL because
"SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley aircraft company.[9]

The first Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) was RDMS, developed at MIT in
the early 1970s, soon followed by Ingres, developed in 1974 at U.C. Berkeley. Ingres
implemented a query language known as QUEL, which was later supplanted in the marketplace
by SQL.[9]

In the late 1970s, Relational Software, Inc. (now Oracle Corporation) saw the potential of the
concepts described by Codd, Chamberlin, and Boyce and developed their own SQL-based
RDBMS with aspirations of selling it to the U.S. Navy, Central Intelligence Agency, and other
U.S. government agencies. In June 1979, Relational Software, Inc. introduced the first
commercially available implementation of SQL, Oracle V2 (Version2) for VAX computers.
Oracle V2 beat IBM's August release of the System/38 RDBMS to market by a few weeks.[citation
needed]

After testing SQL at customer test sites to determine the usefulness and practicality of the
system, IBM began developing commercial products based on their System R prototype
including System/38, SQL/DS, and DB2, which were commercially available in 1979, 1981, and
1983, respectively.[10]

[edit] Language elements

This chart shows several of the SQL language elements that compose a single statement.

The SQL language is sub-divided into several language elements, including:

 Clauses, which are constituent components of statements and queries. (In some cases,
these are optional.)[11]
 Expressions, which can produce either scalar values or tables consisting of columns and
rows of data.
 Predicates, which specify conditions that can be evaluated to SQL three-valued logic
(3VL) or Boolean (true/false/unknown) truth values and which are used to limit the
effects of statements and queries, or to change program flow.
 Queries, which retrieve the data based on specific criteria. This is the most important
element of SQL.
 Statements, which may have a persistent effect on schemata and data, or which may
control transactions, program flow, connections, sessions, or diagnostics.
 o SQL statements also include the semicolon (";") statement terminator. Though not
required on every platform, it is defined as a standard part of the SQL grammar.
 Insignificant whitespace is generally ignored in SQL statements and queries, making it
easier to format SQL code for readability.

[edit] Queries

The most common operation in SQL is the query, which is performed with the declarative
SELECT statement. SELECT retrieves data from one or more tables, or expressions. Standard
SELECT statements have no persistent effects on the database. Some non-standard
implementations of SELECT can have persistent effects, such as the SELECT INTO syntax that
exists in some databases.[12]

Queries allow the user to describe desired data, leaving the database management system
(DBMS) responsible for planning, optimizing, and performing the physical operations necessary
to produce that result as it chooses.

A query includes a list of columns to be included in the final result immediately following the
SELECT keyword. An asterisk ("*") can also be used to specify that the query should return all
columns of the queried tables. SELECT is the most complex statement in SQL, with optional
keywords and clauses that include:

 The FROM clause which indicates the table(s) from which data is to be retrieved. The FROM
clause can include optional JOIN subclauses to specify the rules for joining tables.
 The WHERE clause includes a comparison predicate, which restricts the rows returned by
the query. The WHERE clause eliminates all rows from the result set for which the
comparison predicate does not evaluate to True.
 The GROUP BY clause is used to project rows having common values into a smaller set of
rows. GROUP BY is often used in conjunction with SQL aggregation functions or to
eliminate duplicate rows from a result set. The WHERE clause is applied before the GROUP
BY clause.
 The HAVING clause includes a predicate used to filter rows resulting from the GROUP BY
clause. Because it acts on the results of the GROUP BY clause, aggregation functions can
be used in the HAVING clause predicate.
 The ORDER BY clause identifies which columns are used to sort the resulting data, and in
which direction they should be sorted (options are ascending or descending). Without an
ORDER BY clause, the order of rows returned by an SQL query is undefined.

The following is an example of a SELECT query that returns a list of expensive books. The query
retrieves all rows from the Book table in which the price column contains a value greater than
100.00. The result is sorted in ascending order by title. The asterisk (*) in the select list indicates
that all columns of the Book table should be included in the result set.

SELECT *
FROM Book
WHERE price > 100.00
 ORDER BY title;

The example below demonstrates a query of multiple tables, grouping, and aggregation, by
returning a list of books and the number of authors associated with each book.

SELECT Book.title,
COUNT(*) AS Authors
FROM Book JOIN Book_author
ON Book.isbn = Book_author.isbn
GROUP BY Book.title;

Example output might resemble the following:

Title Authors
---------------------- -------
SQL Examples and Guide 4
The Joy of SQL 1
An Introduction to SQL 2
Pitfalls of SQL 1

Under the precondition that isbn is the only common column name of the two tables and that a
column named title only exists in the Books table, the above query could be rewritten in the
following form:

SELECT title,
COUNT(*) AS Authors
FROM Book NATURAL JOIN Book_author
GROUP BY title;

However, many vendors either do not support this approach, or require certain column naming
conventions in order for natural joins to work effectively.

SQL includes operators and functions for calculating values on stored values. SQL allows the
use of expressions in the select list to project data, as in the following example which returns a
list of books that cost more than 100.00 with an additional sales_tax column containing a sales
tax figure calculated at 6% of the price.

SELECT isbn,
title,
price,
price * 0.06 AS sales_tax
FROM Book
WHERE price > 100.00
ORDER BY title;

[edit] Null and three-valued logic (3VL)

The idea of Null was introduced into SQL to handle missing information in the relational model.
The introduction of Null (or Unknown) along with True and False is the foundation of three-
valued logic. Null does not have a value (and is not a member of any data domain) but is rather a
placeholder or "mark" for missing information. Therefore comparisons with Null can never result
in either True or False but always in the third logical result.[13]

SQL uses Null to handle missing information. It supports three-valued logic (3VL) and the rules
governing SQL three-valued logic are shown below (p and q represent logical states).[14] The
word NULL is also a reserved keyword in SQL, used to identify the Null special marker.

Additionally, since SQL operators return Unknown when comparing anything with Null, SQL
provides two Null-specific comparison predicates: IS NULL and IS NOT NULL test whether data
is or is not Null.[13]

Note that SQL returns only results for which the WHERE clause returns a value of True; i.e. it
excludes results with values of False, but also those whose value is Unknown.

p p
p AND q p OR q
True False Unknown True False Unknown
True True False Unknown True True True True
q False False False False q False True False Unknown
Unknown Unknown False Unknown Unknown True Unknown Unknown
p NOT p p
p=q
True False True False Unknown
False True True True False Unknown
Unknown Unknown q False False True Unknown
Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Universal quantification is not explicitly supported by SQL, and must be worked out as a negated
existential quantification.[15][16][17]

There is also the "<row value expression> IS DISTINCT FROM <row value expression>"
infixed comparison operator which returns TRUE unless both operands are equal or both are
NULL. Likewise, IS NOT DISTINCT FROM is defined as "NOT (<row value expression> IS
DISTINCT FROM <row value expression>)".

[edit] Data manipulation

The Data Manipulation Language (DML) is the subset of SQL used to add, update and delete
data:

 INSERT adds rows (formally tuples) to an existing table, e.g.,:

INSERT INTO My_table

(field1, field2, field3)
VALUES
('test', 'N', NULL);
  UPDATE modifies a set of existing table rows, e.g.,:

UPDATE My_table
SET field1 = 'updated value'
WHERE field2 = 'N';

 DELETE removes existing rows from a table, e.g.,:

DELETE FROM My_table

WHERE field2 = 'N';

 MERGE is used to combine the data of multiple tables. It combines the INSERT and UPDATE
elements. It is defined in the SQL:2003 standard; prior to that, some databases provided
similar functionality via different syntax, sometimes called "upsert".

[edit] Transaction controls

Transactions, if available, wrap DML operations:

 START TRANSACTION (or BEGIN WORK, or BEGIN TRANSACTION, depending on SQL

dialect) mark the start of a database transaction, which either completes entirely or not at
all.
 SAVE TRANSACTION (or SAVEPOINT ) save the state of the database at the current point in
transaction

CREATE TABLE tbl_1(id INT);

INSERT INTO tbl_1(id) VALUES(1);
INSERT INTO tbl_1(id) VALUES(2);
COMMIT;
UPDATE tbl_1 SET id=200 WHERE id=1;
SAVEPOINT id_1upd;
UPDATE tbl_1 SET id=1000 WHERE id=2;
ROLLBACK TO id_1upd;
SELECT id FROM tbl_1;

 COMMIT causes all data changes in a transaction to be made permanent.

 ROLLBACK causes all data changes since the last COMMIT or ROLLBACK to be discarded,
leaving the state of the data as it was prior to those changes.

Once the COMMIT statement completes, the transaction's changes cannot be rolled back.

COMMIT and ROLLBACK terminate the current transaction and release data locks. In the absence of
a START TRANSACTION or similar statement, the semantics of SQL are implementation-
dependent. Example: A classic bank transfer of funds transaction.

START TRANSACTION;
UPDATE Account SET amount=amount-200 WHERE account_number=1234;
UPDATE Account SET amount=amount+200 WHERE account_number=2345;
IF ERRORS=0 COMMIT;
IF ERRORS<>0 ROLLBACK;

[edit] Data definition

The Data Definition Language (DDL) manages table and index structure. The most basic items
of DDL are the CREATE, ALTER, RENAME, DROP and TRUNCATE statements:

 CREATE creates an object (a table, for example) in the database, e.g.,:

CREATE TABLE My_table(

my_field1 INT,
my_field2 VARCHAR(50),
my_field3 DATE NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (my_field1, my_field2)
);

 ALTER modifies the structure of an existing object in various ways, for example, adding a
column to an existing table or a constraint, e.g.,:

ALTER TABLE My_table ADD my_field4 NUMBER(3) NOT NULL;

 TRUNCATE deletes all data from a table in a very fast way, deleting the data inside the
table and not the table itself. It usually implies a subsequent COMMIT operation, i.e., it
cannot be rolled back.

TRUNCATE TABLE My_table;

 DROP deletes an object in the database, usually irretrievably, i.e., it cannot be rolled back,
e.g.,:

DROP TABLE My_table;

[edit] Data types

Each column in an SQL table declares the type(s) that column may contain. ANSI SQL includes
the following datatypes.[18]

[edit] Character strings

 CHARACTER(n) or CHAR(n) — fixed-width n-character string, padded with spaces as

needed
 CHARACTER VARYING(n) or VARCHAR(n) — variable-width string with a maximum size
of n characters
 NATIONAL CHARACTER(n) or NCHAR(n) — fixed width string supporting an international
character set
 NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING(n) or NVARCHAR(n) — variable-width NCHAR string
[edit] Bit strings

 BIT(n) — an array of n bits

 BIT VARYING(n) — an array of up to n bits

[edit] Numbers

 INTEGER and SMALLINT

 FLOAT, REAL and DOUBLE PRECISION
 NUMERIC(precision, scale) or DECIMAL(precision, scale)

SQL provides a function to round numerics or dates, called TRUNC (in Informix, DB2,
PostgreSQL, Oracle and MySQL) or ROUND (in Informix, Sybase, Oracle, PostgreSQL and
Microsoft SQL Server)[19]

[edit] Date and time

 DATE — for date values (e.g., 2011-05-03)

 TIME — for time values (e.g., 15:51:36). The granularity of the time value is usually a
tick (100 nanoseconds).
 TIME WITH TIME ZONE or TIMESTAMP — the same as TIME, but including details about
the time zone in question.
 TIMESTAMP — This is a DATE and a TIME put together in one variable (e.g., 2011-05-03
15:51:36).
 TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE or TIMESTAMPTZ — the same as TIMESTAMP, but including
details about the time zone in question.

SQL provides several functions for generating a date / time variable out of a date / time string
(TO_DATE, TO_TIME, TO_TIMESTAMP), as well as for extracting the respective members (seconds,
for instance) of such variables. The current system date / time of the database server can be
called by using functions like NOW.

[edit] Data control

The Data Control Language (DCL) authorizes users and groups of users to access and
manipulate data. Its two main statements are:

 GRANT authorizes one or more users to perform an operation or a set of operations on an

object.
 REVOKE eliminates a grant, which may be the default grant.

Example:

GRANT SELECT, UPDATE

ON My_table
 TO some_user, another_user;

REVOKE SELECT, UPDATE

ON My_table
FROM some_user, another_user;

[edit] Procedural extensions

SQL is designed for a specific purpose: to query data contained in a relational database. SQL is a
set-based, declarative query language, not an imperative language such as C or BASIC.
However, there are extensions to Standard SQL which add procedural programming language
functionality, such as control-of-flow constructs. These include:

Common
Source Full Name
Name
ANSI/ISO
SQL/PSM SQL/Persistent Stored Modules
Standard
Interbase/
PSQL Procedural SQL
Firebird
IBM SQL PL SQL Procedural Language (implements SQL/PSM)
Microsoft/
T-SQL Transact-SQL
Sybase
Mimer SQL SQL/PSM SQL/Persistent Stored Module (implements SQL/PSM)
MySQL SQL/PSM SQL/Persistent Stored Module (implements SQL/PSM)
Oracle PL/SQL Procedural Language/SQL (based on Ada)
Procedural Language/PostgreSQL Structured Query Language
PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL
(based on Oracle PL/SQL)
Procedural Language/Persistent Stored Modules (implements
PostgreSQL PL/PSM
SQL/PSM)

In addition to the standard SQL/PSM extensions and proprietary SQL extensions, procedural and
object-oriented programmability is available on many SQL platforms via DBMS integration with
other languages. The SQL standard defines SQL/JRT extensions (SQL Routines and Types for
the Java Programming Language) to support Java code in SQL databases. SQL Server 2005 uses
the SQLCLR (SQL Server Common Language Runtime) to host managed .NET assemblies in
the database, while prior versions of SQL Server were restricted to using unmanaged extended
stored procedures which were primarily written in C. Other database platforms, like MySQL and
Postgres, allow functions to be written in a wide variety of languages including Perl, Python, Tcl,
and C.

[edit] Criticism
SQL is a declarative computer language intended for use with relational databases. Many of the
original SQL features were inspired by, but violated, the semantics of the relational model and its
tuple calculus realization. Recent extensions to SQL achieved relational completeness, but have
worsened the violations, as documented in The Third Manifesto. Therefore, it cannot be
considered relational in any significant sense, but is still widely called relational due to
differentiation to other, pre-relational database languages which never intended to implement the
relational model; due to its historical origin; and due to the use of the relational term as
propaganda by product vendors.

Other criticisms of SQL include:

 Implementations are inconsistent with the standard and, usually, incompatible between
vendors. In particular date and time syntax, string concatenation, NULLs, and comparison
case sensitivity vary from vendor to vendor. A particular exception is PostgreSQL, which
strives for compliance, and SQLite, which strives to follow PostgreSQL.
 The language makes it too easy to do a Cartesian join (joining all possible combinations),
which results in "run-away" result sets when WHERE clauses are mistyped. Cartesian joins
are so rarely used in practice that requiring an explicit CARTESIAN keyword may be
warranted. (SQL 1992 introduced the CROSS JOIN keyword that allows the user to make
clear that a Cartesian join is intended, but the shorthand "comma-join" with no predicate
is still acceptable syntax, which still invites the same mistake.)
 It is also possible to misconstruct a WHERE on an update or delete, thereby affecting more
rows in a table than desired. (A work-around is to use transactions or habitually type in
the WHERE clause first, then fill in the rest later.)
 The grammar of SQL is perhaps unnecessarily complex, borrowing a COBOL-like
keyword approach, when a function-influenced syntax could result in more re-use of
fewer grammar and syntax rules.
 The non-compliance of SQL to the relational model, and specifically to the 0th rule of
Codd’s twelve rules, is another source of complexity and incompatibility.

[edit] Cross-vendor portability

Popular implementations of SQL commonly omit support for basic features of Standard SQL,
such as the DATE or TIME data types. The most obvious such examples, and incidentally the most
popular commercial, proprietary SQL DBMSs, are Oracle (whose DATE behaves as DATETIME,[20]
[21]
and lacks a TIME type[22]) and the MS SQL Server. As a result, SQL code can rarely be ported
between database systems without modifications.

There are several reasons for this lack of portability between database systems:

 The complexity and size of the SQL standard means that most implementors do not
support the entire standard.
 The standard does not specify database behavior in several important areas (e.g., indexes,
file storage…), leaving implementations to decide how to behave.
 The SQL standard precisely specifies the syntax that a conforming database system must
implement. However, the standard's specification of the semantics of language constructs
is less well-defined, leading to ambiguity.
  Many database vendors have large existing customer bases; where the SQL standard
conflicts with the prior behavior of the vendor's database, the vendor may be unwilling to
break backward compatibility.
 Software vendors often desire to create incompatibilities with other products, as it
provides a strong incentive for their existing users to remain loyal (see vendor lock-in).

[edit] Standardization
SQL was adopted as a standard by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1986 as
SQL-86[23] and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1987. The original
SQL standard declared that the official pronunciation for SQL is "es queue el".[6] Many English-
speaking database professionals still use the nonstandard[24] pronunciation /ˈsiːkwəl/ (like the
word "sequel").

Until 1996, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) data management
standards program certified SQL DBMS compliance with the SQL standard. Vendors now self-
certify the compliance of their products.[25]

The SQL standard has gone through a number of revisions, as shown below:

Year Name Alias Comments

1986 SQL-86 SQL-87 First formalized by ANSI.
1989 SQL-89 FIPS 127-1 Minor revision, adopted as FIPS 127-1.
1992 SQL-92 SQL2, FIPS 127-2 Major revision (ISO 9075), Entry Level SQL-92 adopted as
FIPS 127-2.
1999 SQL:1999 SQL3 Added regular expression matching, recursive queries,
triggers, support for procedural and control-of-flow
statements, non-scalar types, and some object-oriented
features.
2003 SQL:2003 SQL 2003 Introduced XML-related features, window functions,
standardized sequences, and columns with auto-generated
values (including identity-columns).
2006 SQL:2006 SQL 2006 ISO/IEC 9075-14:2006 defines ways in which SQL can be
used in conjunction with XML. It defines ways of importing
and storing XML data in an SQL database, manipulating it
within the database and publishing both XML and
conventional SQL-data in XML form. In addition, it enables
applications to integrate into their SQL code the use of
XQuery, the XML Query Language published by the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to concurrently access
ordinary SQL-data and XML documents.[26]
2008 SQL:2008 SQL 2008 Legalizes ORDER BY outside cursor definitions. Adds
INSTEAD OF triggers. Adds the TRUNCATE statement. [27]
Interested parties may purchase SQL standards documents from ISO or ANSI. A draft of
SQL:2008 is freely available as a zip archive.[28]

[edit] Standard structure

The SQL standard is divided into several parts, including:

 SQL Framework, provides logical concept

 SQL/Foundation, defined in ISO/IEC 9075, Part 2. This part of the standard contains the
most central elements of the language. It consists of both mandatory and optional
features.
 The SQL/Bindings, specifies how SQL is to be bound to variable host languages,
excluding Java.
 The SQL/CLI, or Call-Level Interface, part is defined in ISO/IEC 9075, Part 3.
SQL/CLI defines common interfacing components (structures and procedures) that can
be used to execute SQL statements from applications written in other programming
languages. SQL/CLI is defined in such a way that SQL statements and SQL/CLI
procedure calls are treated as separate from the calling application's source code. Open
Database Connectivity is a well-known superset of SQL/CLI. This part of the standard
consists solely of mandatory features.
 The SQL/PSM, or Persistent Stored Modules, part is defined by ISO/IEC 9075, Part 4.
SQL/PSM standardizes procedural extensions for SQL, including flow of control,
condition handling, statement condition signals and resignals, cursors and local variables,
and assignment of expressions to variables and parameters. In addition, SQL/PSM
formalizes declaration and maintenance of persistent database language routines (e.g.,
"stored procedures"). This part of the standard consists solely of optional features.
 The SQL/MED, or Management of External Data, part is defined by ISO/IEC 9075,
Part 9. SQL/MED provides extensions to SQL that define foreign-data wrappers and
datalink types to allow SQL to manage external data. External data is data that is
accessible to, but not managed by, an SQL-based DBMS. This part of the standard
consists solely of optional features.
 The SQL/OLB, or Object Language Bindings, part is defined by ISO/IEC 9075, Part
10. SQL/OLB defines the syntax and symantics of SQLJ, which is SQL embedded in
Java. The standard also describes mechanisms to ensure binary portability of SQLJ
applications, and specifies various Java packages and their contained classes. This part of
the standard consists solely of optional features.
 The SQL/MM (Multimedia), This extends SQL to deal intelligently with large, complex
and sometimes streaming items of data, such as video, audio and spatial data.
 The SQL/Schemata, or Information and Definition Schemas, part is defined by
ISO/IEC 9075, Part 11. SQL/Schemata defines the Information Schema and Definition
Schema, providing a common set of tools to make SQL databases and objects self-
describing. These tools include the SQL object identifier, structure and integrity
constraints, security and authorization specifications, features and packages of ISO/IEC
9075, support of features provided by SQL-based DBMS implementations, SQL-based
DBMS implementation information and sizing items, and the values supported by the
 DBMS implementations.[29] This part of the standard contains both mandatory and
optional features.
 The SQL/JRT, or SQL Routines and Types for the Java Programming Language,
part is defined by ISO/IEC 9075, Part 13. SQL/JRT specifies the ability to invoke static
Java methods as routines from within SQL applications. It also calls for the ability to use
Java classes as SQL structured user-defined types. This part of the standard consists
solely of optional features.
 The SQL/XML, or XML-Related Specifications, part is defined by ISO/IEC 9075, Part
14. SQL/XML specifies SQL-based extensions for using XML in conjunction with SQL.
The XML data type is introduced, as well as several routines, functions, and XML-to-
SQL data type mappings to support manipulation and storage of XML in an SQL
database.[26] This part of the standard consists solely of optional features.

[edit] Alternatives
A distinction should be made between alternatives to relational query languages and alternatives
to SQL. Below are proposed relational alternatives to SQL. See navigational database for
alternatives to relational:

 .QL - object-oriented Datalog

 4D Query Language (4D QL)
 Datalog
 HTSQL - URL based query method
 IBM Business System 12 (IBM BS12) - one of the first fully relational database
management systems, introduced in 1982
 ISBL
 Java Persistence Query Language (JPQL) - The query language used by the Java
Persistence API in Java EE5 and Hibernate persistence library
 LINQ
 Object Query Language
 QBE (Query By Example) created by Moshè Zloof, IBM 1977
 Quel introduced in 1974 by the U.C. Berkeley Ingres project.
 Tutorial D
 XQuery

[edit] See also

 Comparison of object-relational database management systems
 Comparison of relational database management systems
 D (data language specification)
 D4 (programming language) (an implementation of D)
 Hierarchical model
 List of relational database management systems
 MUMPS
  NoSQL

[edit] References
1. ^ Paul, Ryan. "A guided tour of the Microsoft Command Shell". Ars Technica.
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2005/10/msh.ars/4. Retrieved 10 April 2011.
2. ^ ISO/IEC 9075-1:2008: Information technology – Database languages – SQL –
Part 1: Framework (SQL/Framework), http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?
csnumber=45498
3. ^ Beaulieu, Alan (April 2009). Mary E Treseler. ed. Learning SQL (2nd ed.).
Sebastapol, CA, USA: O'Reilly. ISBN 978-0-596-52083-0.
4. ^ ɛ _ s, "Database Debunkings"
5. ^ Codd, Edgar F (June 1970). "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data
Banks". Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) 13 (6):
377–87. doi:10.1145/362384.362685. http://www.acm.org/classics/nov95/toc.html.
Retrieved 2007-06-09.
6. ^ a b Chapple, Mike. "SQL Fundamentals". Databases. About.com.
http://databases.about.com/od/sql/a/sqlfundamentals.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
7. ^ "Structured Query Language (SQL)". International Business Machines. October
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 Discussion on alleged SQL flaws (C2 wiki)

[edit] External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of
Structured Query Language
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of
SQL dialects reference
Wikiversity has learning materials about Topic:Computer Science

 1995 SQL Reunion: People, Projects, and Politics, by Paul McJones (ed.): transcript of a
reunion meeting devoted to the personal history of relational databases and SQL.
 American National Standards Institute. X3H2 Records, 1978-1995 Charles Babbage
Institute Collection documents the H2 committee’s development of the NDL and SQL
standards.
 Oral history interview with Donald D. Chamberlin Charles Babbage Institute In this oral
history Chamberlin recounts his early life, his education at Harvey Mudd College and
Stanford University, and his work on relational database technology. Chamberlin was a
member of the System R research team and, with Raymond F. Boyce, developed the SQL
database language. Chamberlin also briefly discusses his more recent research on XML
query languages.
 Comparison of Different SQL Implementations This comparison of various SQL
implementations is intended to serve as a guide to those interested in porting SQL code
between various RDBMS products, and includes comparisons between SQL:2008,
PostgreSQL, DB2, MS SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and Informix.

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