Introduction to SQL

Full overview

Students will need a Windows computer in order to use SQL Server Management Studio.

In this lesson you will gain an understanding of what a relational database is, and become familiar with the concepts and terms that apply to the database systems.

In this lesson you will learn how to use the primary tool for working with SQL Server 2016, the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

In this lesson you will learn how to code SELECT statements that retrieve data from a single table. These skills are the essential ones that apply to any SELECT statement, no matter how complex. You'll want to be sure you have a good understanding of the material in this lesson before you go on to the lessons that follow.

In this lesson you will learn how to create result sets that contain data from two or more tables.

In this lesson you will learn how to code queries that summarize data. For example, you can use summary queries to report sales totals by vendor or state, or to get a count of the number of invoices that were processed each day of the month.

A subquery is a SELECT statement that's coded within another SQL statement. You can use subqueries to build queries that would be difficult or impossible to do otherwise. In this lesson you will learn how to use subqueries within SELECT statements.

In this lesson you'll learn how to code the INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements to modify the data in a table. When you're done with this lesson, you'll know how to code the four statements that are used every day by professional SQL programmers.

So far, you have been using SQL statements to work with the three most common types of data: strings, numbers, and dates. Now, this lesson takes a more in-depth look at the data types that are available with SQL Server and shows some basic skills for working with them.

This lesson expands on the SELECT concepts from Lesson 3 by presenting many more of the scalar functions. When you complete this lesson, you'll have a thorough understanding of the functions that you can use with SQL Server.

In this lesson you'll learn how to design a new database. This is useful information for the SQL programmer whether or not you ever design a database on your own.

Now that you've learned how to design a database, you're ready to learn how to implement your design. To do that, you use the set of SQL statement that are known as the data definition language (DDL). You can use the DDL statements to create and modify the database objects such as tables and sequences that you need for testing. Knowing what these statements do will give you a better appreciation for how a database works.

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