SQL in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Chapter 5. Manipulating Your Data

In this chapter, we will explore the key SQL statements and clauses needed to update information in your database. You will learn about the fundamental UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE statements and the various subclauses you can use within them to select data you need to update.

How to Use This Chapter

When researching a command in this chapter:

1. Read “SQL Platform Support”.

2. Check Table 5-1.

3. Look up the specific SQL statement, check the syntax, and read the “Keywords,” “Rules at a glance,” and “Programming tips and gotchas” sections. Do this even if you are looking for a specific platform implementation.

4. Finally, read the platform-specific implementation information.

You will note that the entry for a given platform implementation does not duplicate information on any clauses that do not differ from the standard. So, it is possible that you will need to flip between the descriptions for a vendor variation and the SQL standard to cover all possible details of that command.

In our discussions of MySQL, we will also include MariaDB, a fork of MySQL. For the most part, MySQL and MariaDB provide fully code-compatible syntax. In these cases we will refer to them collectively as MySQL. We will explicitly mention MariaDB only in situations where it deviates from MySQL in an important way.

SQL Platform Support

Table 5-1 provides a listing of the SQL statements covered in this chapter, the platforms that support them, and the degree to which they support ...