Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, 2nd Edition

3.3. Querying Data

You have now looked at the database concepts of normalization, relations, and joins. You have also been introduced to the Galactic database. We use this relational database throughout the remainder of this book for our examples. Now, it is time to look more specifically at how you retrieve the data from the database into a format you can use for reporting. This is done through the database query.

A query is a request for some action on the data in one or more tables. An INSERT query adds one or more rows to a database table. An UPDATE query modifies the data in one or more existing rows of a table. A DELETE query removes one or more rows from a table. Because we are primarily interested in retrieving data for reporting, the ...