Head First SQL, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. Inserting Data Adding Data to Tables

A Note for Early Release Readers

With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official release of these titles.

This will be the 2nd chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made active later on.

If you have comments about how we might improve the content and/or examples in this book, or if you notice missing material within this chapter, please reach out to the editor at [e-mail].

Time to dress the walls? Creating databases and tables is great fun, but what’s the point of all that precious SQL structure without actual data installed?

That’s where this chapter comes in. Here, you’ll learn how to add values to your tables with the INSERT command. You’ll see some INSERT variations and meet that infamous NULL character you’ve heard gallery ghost stories about. But not to worry, you’re also going to tame those missing values with some minor adjustments to your CREATE TABLE statement.

There’s a lot to do, so don’t delay your acquisition. Let’s secure the placement of your data.

Setting up a database with tables

In Chapter 1, you learned that you can store data in a relational database that contains tables. You can think about your information as categories, which ...