devcoders.net

Before we continue talking about php and mysql I want to give you a brief introduction to The SQL World.

SQL (Structure Query Language):

SQL was first introduced by IBM developers Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce in the 70s with the name of SEQUEL. This release of SQL was designed to manipulate a database system call System R. The name of SEQUEL was later change to SQL for trademark reason.

What is a RDBMS:
A Relation Database Management System is not more than the software that is used to manipulate the Database.

Commons RDBMS:

• Oracle
• Microsoft SQL server
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• SQL Lite

SQL language is divided in two groups:

Data Definition Language (DDL):
Allows you to manipulate the structure of the database.  Alter, Drop and Create table are in this group.

Data Modeling Language (DML):
The statements that allow you to interact with data inside the tables. For example select, delete and update.

SQL Select:

The select is the most commonly used command. This statement retrieves data from the database.  Let’s say that you want to get a list of all employees in your company.

SELECT *
    FROM Employees

SQL language works a little bit different from other language. Queries aren’t executed in the orders that are written.  See execution order below:

• FROM:
  Specify the table from which the data is going to be extracted.
• WHERE:
  Filter the data by a condition.
• GROUP BY:
  Group the rows based on the value list on the GROUP BY Clause.
• HAVING:
  Filter the group based on the condition. Only return records that match the condition.
• SELECT:
  Select the field that is needed at the moment. (*) Get all the fields inside the table.
• DISTINCT:
  Remove all duplicated rows from result.
• ORDER BY:
  Sort the result base on the specification.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

Bell, Charles A. (2007) Expert Mysql