The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL

1 Introductory Transact-SQL

The single biggest challenge to learning SQL programming is unlearning procedural programming.—Joe Celko

SQL is the lingua franca of the database world. Most modern DBMSs use some type of SQL dialect as their primary query language, including SQL Server. You can use SQL to create or destroy objects on the database server such as tables and to do things with those objects, such as put data into them or query them for that data. No single vendor owns SQL, and each is free to tailor the language to better satisfy its own customer base. Despite this latitude, there is a multilateral agreement against which each implementation is measured. It’s commonly referred to as the ANSI/ISO SQL standard and is governed by the ...