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SQL Cheat Sheet

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SQL Cheat Sheet

In this guide, you’ll find a useful cheat sheet that documents some of the more
commonly used elements of SQL, and even a few of the less common. Hopefully, it
will help developers – both beginner and experienced level – become more
proficient in their understanding of the SQL language.

Use this as a quick reference during development, a learning aid, or even print it
out and bind it if you’d prefer (whatever works!).

But before we get to the cheat sheet itself, for developers who may not be familiar
with SQL, let’s start with…

What is SQL

SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It’s the language of choice on today’s
web for storing, manipulating and retrieving data within relational databases.
Most, if not all of the websites you visit will use it in some way, including this one.

Here’s what a basic relational database looks like. This example in particular
stores e-commerce information, specifically the products on sale, the users who
buy them, and records of these orders which link these 2 entities.

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Using SQL, you are able to interact with the database by writing queries, which
when executed, return any results which meet its criteria.

Here’s an example query:-

SELECT * FROM users;

Using this SELECT statement, the query selects all data from all columns in the
user’s table. It would then return data like the below, which is typically called a
results set:-

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If we were to replace the asterisk wildcard character (*) with specific column
names instead, only the data from these columns would be returned from the
query.

SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users;

We can add a bit of complexity to a standard SELECT statement by adding a

WHERE clause, which allows you to filter what gets returned.

SELECT * FROM products WHERE stock_count <= 10 ORDER BY stock_count

ASC;

This query would return all data from the products table with a stock_count value
of less than 10 in its results set. The use of the ORDER BY keyword means the results
will be ordered using the stock_count column, lowest values to highest.

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Using the INSERT INTO statement, we can add new data to a table. Here’s a basic
example adding a new user to the users table:-

INSERT INTO users (first_name, last_name, address, email)

VALUES (‘Tester’, ‘Jester’, ‘123 Fake Street, Sheffield,
United Kingdom’, ‘[email protected]’);

Then if you were to rerun the query to return all data from the user’s table, the
results set would look like this:

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Of course, these examples demonstrate only a very small selection of what the
SQL language is capable of.

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SQL vs MySQL

You may have heard of MySQL before. It’s important that you don’t confuse this
with SQL itself, as there’s a clear difference.

SQL is the language. It outlines syntax that allows you to write queries that
manage relational databases. Nothing more.

MySQL meanwhile is a database system that runs on a server. It implements the

SQL language, allowing you to write queries using its syntax to manage MySQL
databases.

In addition to MySQL, there are other systems that implement SQL. Some of the
more popular ones include:

• PostgreSQL
• SQLite
• Oracle Database
• Microsoft SQL Server

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Installing MySQL

Windows

The recommended way to install MySQL on Windows is by using the installer you
can download from the MySQL website.

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MacOS

On macOS, the recommended way to install MySQL is using native packages,

which sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. Essentially, it also
involves just downloading an installer.

Alternatively, If you prefer to use package managers such as Homebrew, you can
install MySQL like so:

brew install mysql

Whilst if you need to install the older MySQL version 5.7, which is still widely used
today on the web, you can:

brew install [email protected]

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Using MySQL

There are lots of apps to choose from which largely do the same job, so it’s down
to your own personal preference on which one to use:

• MySQL Workbench is developed by Oracle, the owner of MySQL.

• HeidiSQL (Recommended Windows) is a free, open-source app for
Windows. For macOS and Linux users, Wine is first required as a
prerequisite.
• phpMyAdmin is a very popular alternative that operates in the web
browser.
• Sequel Pro (Recommended macOS) is a macOS’ only alternative and our
favorite thanks to its clear and easy to use interface.

When you’re ready to start writing your own SQL queries, rather than spending
time creating your own database, consider importing dummy data instead.

The MySQL website provides a number of dummy databases that you can
download free of charge and then import into your SQL app.

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Our favorite of these is the world database, which provides some interesting data
to practice writing SQL queries for. Here’s a screenshot of its country table within
Sequel Pro.

This example query returns all countries with Queen Elizabeth II as their head of
state .

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Whilst this one returns all European countries with a population of over 50million
along with their capital city and its population.

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Cheat

Keywords

A collection of keywords used in SQL statements, a description, and where

appropriate an example. Some of the more advanced keywords have their own
dedicated section later in the cheat sheet.

Where MySQL is mentioned next to an example, this means this example is only
applicable to MySQL databases (as opposed to any other database system).

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Comments

Comments allow you to explain sections of your SQL statements, or to comment

out code and prevent its execution.

In SQL, there are 2 types of comments, single line and multiline.

Single Line Comments

Single line comments start with –. Any text after these 2 characters to the end of
the line will be ignored.

-- My Select query
SELECT * FROM users;

Multiline Comments

Multiline comments start with /* and end with */. They stretch across multiple
lines until the closing characters have been found.

/*
This is my select query.
It grabs all rows of data from the users table
*/
SELECT * FROM users;
/*
This is another select query, which I don’t want to execute yet
SELECT * FROM tasks;
*/

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MySQL Data Types

When creating a new table or editing an existing one, you must specify the type of
data that each column accepts.

In the below example, data passed to the id column must be an int, whilst the
first_name column has a VARCHAR data type with a maximum of 255 characters.

CREATE TABLE users (

id int,
first_name varchar(255) )
);

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Numeric Data Types

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Date / Time Data Types

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Operators

Arithmetic Operators

Bitwise Operator

Comparison Operators

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Comparison Operators

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Function

String Functions

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Numeric Functions

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Date Functions

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Misc Functions

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Wildcards Characters

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Keys
In relational databases, there is a concept of primary and foreign keys. In SQL
tables, these are included as constraints, where a table can have a primary key, a
foreign key, or both.

Primary Key

A primary key allows each record in a table to be uniquely identified. There can
only be one primary key per table, and you can assign this constraint to any
single or combination of columns. However, this means each value within this
column(s) must be unique.

Typically in a table, the primary key is an ID column, and is usually paired with the
AUTO_ INCREMENT keyword. This means the value increases automatically as new
records are created.

Example 1 (MySQL)

Create a new table and set the primary key to the ID column.

CREATE TABLE users (

id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
first_name varchar(255),
last_name varchar(255) NOT NULL,
address varchar(255),
email varchar(255),
PRIMARY KEY (id) );

Example 2 (MySQL)

Alter an existing table and set the primary key to the first_name column.

ALTER TABLE users

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ADD PRIMARY KEY (first_name);

Foreign Key

A foreign key can be applied to one column or many and is used to

link 2 tables together in a relational database.

As seen in the diagram below, the table containing the foreign key is called the
child key, whilst the table which contains

the referenced key, or candidate key, is called the parent table.

This essentially means that the column data is shared between 2 tables, as a
foreign key also prevents invalid data from being inserted which isn’t also present
in the parent table.

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Example 1 (MySQL)

Create a new table and turn any columns that reference IDs in other tables into
foreign keys.

CREATE TABLE orders (

id int NOT NULL,
user_id int,
product_id int,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES users(id),
FOREIGN KEY (product_id) REFERENCES products(id) );

Example 2 (MySQL)

Alter an existing table and create a foreign key.

ALTER TABLE orders

ADD FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES users(id)

Indexes

Indexes are attributes that can be assigned to columns that are frequently
searched against to make data retrieval a quicker and more efficient process.

This doesn’t mean each column should be made into an index though, as it takes
longer for a column with an index to be updated than a column without. This is
because when indexed columns are updated, the index itself must also be
updated.

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Joins

In SQL, a JOIN clause is used to return a results set which combines data from
multiple tables, based on a common column which is featured in both of them

There are a number of different joins available for you to use:

• Inner Join (Default): Returns any records which have matching values in
both tables.
• Left Join: Returns all of the records from the first table, along with any
matching records from the second table.
• Right Join: Returns all of the records from the second table, along with any
matching records from the first.
• Full Join: Returns all records from both tables when there is a match. A
common way of visualising how joins work is like this:

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In the following example, an inner join will be used to create a new unifying view
combining the orders table and then 3 different tables

We’ll replace the user_id and product_id with the first_name and surname
columns of the user who placed the order, along with the name of the item which
was purchased.

SELECT orders.id, users.first_name, users.surname, products.name as

‘product name’
FROM orders
INNER JOIN users on orders.user_id = users.id
INNER JOIN products on orders.product_id = products.id;

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Would return a results set which looks like:

View

A view is essentially a SQL results set that get stored in the database under a
label, so you can return to it later, without having to rerun the query. These are
especially useful when you have a costly SQL query which may be needed a
number of times, so instead of running it over and over to generate the same
results set, you can just do it once and save it as a view

Creating Views

To create a view, you can do so like this:

CREATE VIEW priority_users AS

SELECT * FROM users
WHERE country = ‘United Kingdom’;

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Then in future, if you need to access the stored result set, you can do so like this:

SELECT * FROM [priority_users];

Replacing Views

With the CREATE OR REPLACE command, a view can be updated.

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW [priority_users] AS

SELECT * FROM users
WHERE country = ‘United Kingdom’ OR country=’USA’;

Deleting Views

To delete a view, simply use the DROP VIEW command.

DROP VIEW priority_users;

Conclusions

The majority of the websites on today’s web use relational databases in some
way. This makes SQL a valuable language to know, as it allows you to create more
complex, functional websites and systems.

Make sure to bookmark this page, so in the future, if you’re working with SQL and
can’t quite remember a specific operator, how to write a certain query, or are just
confused about how joins work, then you’ll have a cheat sheet on hand which is
ready, willing and able to help.

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