September 2004
Intermediate to advanced
710 pages
24h 25m
English
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Categories of Syntax
To begin to use SQL, you must understand how statements are written. SQL syntax falls into four main categories. Each category is introduced in the following list and then explained in further detail in the sections that follow:
- Identifiers
Describe a user- or system-supplied name for database objects, such as a database, a table, a constraint on a table, the columns in a table, a view, etc.
- Literals
Describe a user- or system-supplied string or value that is not otherwise an identifier or a keyword. Literals may be strings like “hello”, numbers like 1234, dates like “Jan 01, 2002”, or Boolean values like TRUE.
- Operators
Are symbols specifying an action performed on one or more expressions, most often in DELETE , INSERT, SELECT, or UPDATE statements. Operators are also used frequently in the creation of database objects.
- Reserved words and keywords
Have special meaning to the database SQL parser, such as SELECT, GRANT, DELETE, or CREATE. Reserved words are words that cannot be used as identifiers within the database platform, usually commands or SQL statements. Keywords are words that may become reserved some time in the future. You can circumvent the restriction on using reserved words and keywords as identifiers through quoted identifiers, described in a moment. This is not recommended! Elsewhere in the book (besides here), we use the term keyword to describe both concepts.
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