Foreword

In the 30 years since the database language SQL was adopted as an international standard, and the 30 years since SQL database products appeared on the market, SQL has become the predominant language for storing, modifying, retrieving, and deleting data. Today, a significant portion of the world’s data—and the world’s economy—is tracked using SQL databases.

SQL is everywhere because it is a very powerful tool for manipulating data. It is in high-performance transaction processing systems. It is behind Web interfaces. I’ve even found SQL in network monitoring tools and spam firewalls.

Today, SQL can be executed directly, embedded in programming languages, and accessed through call interfaces. It is hidden inside GUI development tools, ...

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