Beginning Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Programming

Chapter 3

The Foundation Statements of T-SQL

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• How to retrieve data from your database
• How to insert data into tables
• How to update data in place

At last! You’ve finally ingested the most boring stuff. It doesn’t get any worse than basic objects and tools, does it? As it goes, you have to lay down a foundation before you can build a house. The nice thing is that the foundation is now down. Having used the clichéd example of building a house, I’m going to turn it all upside down by talking about the things that let you enjoy living in the house before you’ve even talked about the plumbing. You see, when working with databases, you have to get to know how data is going to be accessed before you can learn all that much about the best ways to store it.

This chapter covers the most fundamental Transact-SQL (T-SQL) statements. T-SQL is SQL Server’s own dialect of Structured Query Language (SQL). The T-SQL statements that you learn about in this chapter are:

• SELECT
• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE

These four statements are the bread and butter of T-SQL. You’ll learn plenty of other statements as you go along, but these statements make up the basis of T-SQL’s Data Manipulation Language (DML). Because you’ll generally issue far more commands meant to manipulate (that is, read and modify) data than other types of commands (such as those to grant user rights or create a table), you’ll find that these will become like old friends in no time at all.

In addition, ...