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Allen G. Taylor
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Published:
December 11, 2018

SQL For Dummies

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Overview

Get ready to make SQL easy!

Updated for the latest version of SQL, the new edition of this perennial bestseller shows programmers and web developers how to use SQL to build relational databases and get valuable information from them. Covering everything you need to know to make working with SQL easier than ever, topics include how to use SQL to structure a DBMS and implement a database design; secure a database; and retrieve information from a database; and much more.  

SQL is the international standard database language used to create, access, manipulate, maintain, and store information in relational database management systems (DBMS) such as Access, Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL. SQL adds powerful data manipulation and retrieval capabilities to conventional languages—and this book shows you how to harness the core element of relational databases with ease.

  • Server platform that gives you choices of development languages, data types, on-premises or cloud, and operating systems
  • Find great examples on the use of temporal data
  • Jump right in—without previous knowledge of database programming or SQL

As database-driven websites continue to grow in popularity—and complexity—SQL For Dummies is the easy-to-understand, go-to resource you need to use it seamlessly.

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About The Author

Allen G. Taylor is a 30-year veteran of the computer industry and the author of over 40 books, including SQL For Dummies and Crystal Reports For Dummies. He lectures nationally on databases, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He also teaches database development internationally through a leading online education provider.

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CHEAT SHEET

This Cheat Sheet consists of several helpful tables and lists, containing information that comes up repeatedly when working with structured query language (SQL). In one place, you can get a quick answer to a number of different questions that frequently arise during an SQL development effort.SQL criteria for normal formsTo ensure that database tables are designed in such a way that they will hold your data reliably, you need to be sure that they are not subject to modification anomalies.
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Whether you’re working with Access or a full-featured enterprise-level DBMS — like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, or IBM DB2 — to create a table with SQL, you must enter the same information that you’d enter if you created the table with a RAD tool.The difference is that the RAD tool helps you by providing a visual interface — in the form of a table-creation dialog box (or some similar data-entry skeleton) — and by preventing you from entering invalid field names, types, or sizes.
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You create an SQL trigger, logically enough, with a CREATE TRIGGER statement. After the trigger is created, it lies in wait — waiting for the triggering event to occur. When the triggering event occurs, bang! The trigger fires.The syntax for the CREATE TRIGGER statement is fairly involved, but you can break it down into understandable pieces.
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To use a SQL cursor, you first must declare its existence to the DBMS. You do this with a DECLARE CURSOR statement. The DECLARE CURSOR statement doesn't actually cause anything to happen; it just announces the SQL cursor’s name to the DBMS and specifies what query the cursor will operate on. A DECLARE CURSOR statement has the following syntax: DECLARE cursor-name [] [] CURSOR [] [] FOR query expression [ORDER BY order-by expression] [FOR updatability expression] ; The cursor name uniquely identifies a cursor, so it must be unlike that of any other cursor name in the current module or compilation unit.
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The first step to designing any database in SQL is to identify what to include and what not to include. The next steps involve deciding how the included items relate to each other and then setting up tables accordingly.To design a database in SQL, follow these basic steps: Decide what objects you want to include in your database.
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SQL offers several different types of joins, including the column-name join and inner join, to help you accomplish your specific task. Here are some examples to help guide you on your SQL journey. Column-name join The column-name join is like a natural join, but it’s more flexible. In a natural join, all the source table columns that have the same name are compared with each other for equality.
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Within the WHERE clause lies many possibilities for modifying your SQL statement. Among these possibilities are the EXISTS, UNIQUE, DISTINCT, and OVERLAPS predicates. Here are some examples of how to use these in your SQL statements. EXISTS You can use the EXISTS predicate in conjunction with a subquery to determine whether the subquery returns any rows.
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SQL gives you options for retrieving, analyzing, and displaying the information you need with the GROUP BY, HAVING, and ORDER BY clauses. Here are some examples of how you can use them. GROUP BY clauses Sometimes, rather than retrieving individual records, you want to know something about a group of records. The GROUP BY clause is the tool you need.
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You can use the LIKE SQL predicate to compare two character strings for a partial match. Partial matches are valuable if you don’t know the exact form of the string for which you’re searching. You can also use partial matches to retrieve multiple rows that contain similar strings in one of the table’s columns.
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Referential integrity involves maintaining consistency in a multitable SQL database. You can lose integrity by adding a row to a child table that doesn’t have a corresponding row in the child’s parent table. You can cause similar problems by deleting a row from a parent table if rows corresponding to that row exist in a child table.
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Every column contains one value for each row of a table. SQL statements often refer to such values. A fully qualified column reference consists of the table name, a period, and then the column name (for example, PRICING.Product). Consider the following statement: SELECT PRICING.Cost FROM PRICING WHERE PRICING.
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Access is designed as a rapid application development (RAD) tool that does not require programming. You can write and execute SQL statements in Access, but you have to use a back-door method to do it. To open a basic editor where you can enter SQL code, follow these steps:Open your database and click the CREATE tab.
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SQL joins are extremely useful. Unlike the other kinds of SQL join, the union join makes no attempt to match a row from the left source table with any rows in the right source table. It creates a new virtual table that contains the SQL union of all the columns in both source tables. In the virtual result table, the columns that came from the left source table contain all the rows that were in the left source table.
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ODBC is a standard interface between a SQL database and an application that accesses the data in the database. Having a standard enables any application front end to access any database back end by using SQL. The only requirement is that the front end and the back end both adhere to the ODBC standard. ODBC 4.0 is the current version of the standard.
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After you create a database in SQL, the next step is to fill it with data. The next step after that is to wait around until there's a need for some particular bit of information contained somewhere in that data, like a needle in a haystack. When the time comes and you want to find that needle, you can use SQL's Data Manipulation Language (DML) to perform a virtual needle extraction.
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To ensure that database tables are designed in such a way that they will hold your data reliably, you need to be sure that they are not subject to modification anomalies. Normalizing your databases will give you that assurance. Compare the SQL criteria in the following list to the tables in your database. Doing so will alert you to the possibility of anomalies, when you find that your database is not sufficiently normalized.
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There are three sources of modification anomalies in SQL These are defined as first, second, and third normal forms (1NF, 2NF, 3NF). These normal forms act as remedies to modification anomalies. First normal form To be in first normal form (1NF), a table must have the following qualities: The table is two-dimensional with rows and columns.
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This Cheat Sheet consists of several helpful tables and lists, containing information that comes up repeatedly when working with structured query language (SQL). In one place, you can get a quick answer to a number of different questions that frequently arise during an SQL development effort.SQL criteria for normal formsTo ensure that database tables are designed in such a way that they will hold your data reliably, you need to be sure that they are not subject to modification anomalies.
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The SQL set functions give you a quick answer to questions you may have about the characteristics of your data as a whole. How many rows does a table have? What is the highest value in the table? What is the lowest? These are the kinds of questions that the SQL set functions can answer for you. Function Effect COUNT Returns the number of rows in the specified table MAX Returns the maximum value that occurs in the specified able MIN Returns the minimum value that occurs in the specified table SUM Adds up the values in a specified column AVG Returns the average of all the values in the specified column LISTAGG Transforms values from a group of rows into a delimited string Trigonometric and Logarithmic Functions sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan, sinh, cosh, tanh, log(<base>, <value>), log10(<value>).
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These SQL value functions perform operations on data. There are all kinds of operations that could conceivably be performed on data items, but these are some that are needed most often. String Value Functions Function Effect SUBSTRING Extracts a substring from a source string SUBSTRING SIMILAR Extracts a subs
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Predicates boil down to either a TRUE or a FALSE result. You can filter out unwanted rows from the result of an SQL query by applying a WHERE clause whose predicate excludes the unwanted rows. Comparison Predicates = Equal Not equal Less than Less than or equal > Greater than >= Greater than or equal
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SQL constraints are important for data validation. Ensuring the validity of the data in your database means doing more than just making sure the data is of the right type. Perhaps some columns, for example, should never hold a null value — and maybe others should hold only values that fall within a certain range.
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The first thing to understand about SQL is that SQL isn’t a procedural language, as are Python, C, C++, C#, and Java. To solve a problem in a procedural language, you write a procedure — a sequence of commands that performs one specific operation after another until the task is complete. The procedure may be a straightforward linear sequence or may loop back on itself, but in either case, the programmer specifies the order of execution.
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