SQL is a standard database language used to access and manipulate data in databases.

SQL
stands for Structured Query Language. SQL was developed by IBM Computer Scientists in
the 1970s. By executing queries SQL can create, update, delete, and retrieve data in
databases like MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc. Overall SQL is a query language that
communicates with databases.

What is a Database?

Data is the new fuel of this world but only data is unorganized information, so to organize that
data we make a database. A database is the organized collection of structured data which is
usually controlled by a database management system (DBMS). Databases help us with easily
storing, accessing, and manipulating data held on a computer.

Structured Query Language (SQL)

Structured Query Language is a standard Database language which is used
to create, maintain and retrieve the relational database. Following are some
interesting facts about SQL.
 SQL is case insensitive. But it is a recommended practice to use
keywords (like SELECT, UPDATE, CREATE, etc) in capital letters and
use user defined things (liked table name, column name, etc) in small
letters.
 We can write comments in SQL using “–” (double hyphen) at the
beginning of any line.
 SQL is the programming language for relational databases (explained
below) like MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, Postgre, etc. Other non-
relational databases (also called NoSQL) databases like MongoDB,
DynamoDB, etc do not use SQL

What is Relational Database?

 Relational database means the data is stored as well as retrieved in
the form of relations (tables). Table 1 shows the relational database
with only one relation called STUDENT which
stores ROLL_NO, NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE and AGE of students.
STUDENT
ROLL_NO NAME ADDRESS PHONE AGE

1 RAM DELHI 9455123451 18

2 RAMESH GURGAON 9652431543 18

3 SUJIT ROHTAK 9156253131 20

4 SURESH DELHI 9156768971 18

These are some important terminologies that are used in terms of relation.
Attribute: Attributes are the properties that define a relation.
e.g.; ROLL_NO, NAME etc.
Tuple: Each row in the relation is known as tuple. The above relation
contains 4 tuples, one of which is shown as:
1 RAM DELHI 9455123451 18

Degree: The number of attributes in the relation is known as degree of the

relation. The STUDENT relation defined above has degree 5.
Cardinality: The number of tuples in a relation is known as cardinality.
The STUDENT relation defined above has cardinality 4.
Column: Column represents the set of values for a particular attribute. The
column ROLL_NO is extracted from relation STUDENT.
ROLL_NO

The queries to deal with relational database can be categories as:

Data Definition Language: It is used to define the structure of the database.
e.g; CREATE TABLE, ADD COLUMN, DROP COLUMN and so on.
Data Manipulation Language: It is used to manipulate data in the relations.
e.g.; INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE and so on.
Data Query Language: It is used to extract the data from the relations. e.g.;
SELECT
So first we will consider the Data Query Language. A generic query to
retrieve from a relational database is:
1. SELECT [DISTINCT] Attribute_List FROM R1,R2….RM
2. [WHERE condition]
3. [GROUP BY (Attributes)[HAVING condition]]
4. [ORDER BY(Attributes)[DESC]];
 Part of the query represented by statement 1 is compulsory if you want
to retrieve from a relational database. The statements written inside []
are optional. We will look at the possible query combination on relation
shown in Table 1.
 Case 1: If we want to retrieve attributes ROLL_NO and NAME of all
students, the query will be:
 SELECT ROLL_NO, NAME FROM STUDENT;

ROLL_NO NAME

1 RAM

2 RAMESH

3 SUJIT

4 SURESH

Case 2: If we want to retrieve ROLL_NO and NAME of the students

whose ROLL_NO is greater than 2, the query will be:
SELECT ROLL_NO, NAME FROM STUDENT
WHERE ROLL_NO>2;

ROLL_NO NAME

3 SUJIT

4 SURESH

CASE 3: If we want to retrieve all attributes of students, we can write * in

place of writing all attributes as:
SELECT * FROM STUDENT
WHERE ROLL_NO>2;

ROLL_NO NAME ADDRESS PHONE AGE

3 SUJIT ROHTAK 9156253131 20

4 SURESH DELHI 9156768971 18

CASE 4: If we want to represent the relation in ascending order by AGE, we

can use ORDER BY clause as:
SELECT * FROM STUDENT ORDER BY AGE;

ROLL_NO NAME ADDRESS PHONE AGE

1 RAM DELHI 9455123451 18

2 RAMESH GURGAON 9652431543 18

 4 SURESH DELHI 9156768971 18

3 SUJIT ROHTAK 9156253131 20

Note: ORDER BY AGE is equivalent to ORDER BY AGE ASC. If we want to

retrieve the results in descending order of AGE, we can use ORDER
BY AGE DESC.
CASE 5: If we want to retrieve distinct values of an attribute or group of
attribute, DISTINCT is used as in:
SELECT DISTINCT ADDRESS FROM STUDENT;

ADDRESS

DELHI

GURGAON

ROHTAK

If DISTINCT is not used, DELHI will be repeated twice in result set.

Before understanding GROUP BY and HAVING, we need to
understand aggregations functions in SQL.