MS SQL overview

SQL Server is a data engine introduced by Microsoft. It provides an environment used to create and manage databases. It allows secure and efficient storage. It provides other components and services that support the business intelligence platform to generate reports and help analyze the data

SQL is a standard language for accessing and manipulating databases

What is SQL?

• SQL stands for Structured Query Language
• SQL lets you access and manipulate databases
• SQL became a standard of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1986, and of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1987

What Can SQL do?

• SQL can execute queries against a database
• SQL can retrieve data from a database
• SQL can insert records in a database
• SQL can update records in a database
• SQL can delete records from a database
• SQL can create new databases
• SQL can create new tables in a database
• SQL can create stored procedures in a database
• SQL can create views in a database
• SQL can set permissions on tables, procedures, and views

Using SQL in Your Application

To build a web application (API) that shows data from a database, you will need:

• An RDBMS database program (i.e. MS Access, SQL Server, MySQL)
• To use a server-side scripting language, like .Net, PHP, JAVA
• To use SQL to get the data you want
• To use HTML / CSS to style the page

RDBMS

RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System.

RDBMS is the basis for SQL, and for all modern database systems such as MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft Access.

The data in RDBMS is stored in database objects called tables. A table is a collection of related data entries and it consists of columns and rows.

Look at the "Students" table:

 

Example:

SELECT * FROM Customers;

Every table is broken up into smaller entities called fields. The fields in the Student table consist of StudentID, FirstName, LastName, Address, City, PostalCode and Country. A field is a column in a table that is designed to maintain specific information about every record in the table.

A record, also called a row, is each individual entry that exists in a table. For example, there are 91 records in the above Student table. A record is a horizontal entity in a table.

A column is a vertical entity in a table that contains all information associated with a specific field in a table.

Summary:

MS SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Microsoft. This product is built for the basic function of storing retrieving data as required by other applications. It can be run either on the same computer or on another across a network. This tutorial explains some basic and advanced concepts of SQL Server such as how to create and restore data, create login and backup, assign permissions, etc. Each topic is explained using examples for easy understanding.