Transact-SQL Desk Reference

1.2. SQL LANGUAGE

SQL is the international standard database programming language and has been called the language for “Intergalactic Dataspeak.” The current standard version of SQL used by commercial relational database management vendors is SQL–92, as in Table 1-2. The version of SQL used by Microsoft SQL Server is called Transact–SQL and it is SQL–92 compliant.

1.2.1. Where Does SQL Fit In?

SQL is the standard language used by a database client to communicate with the database management system to create, modify, delete and read both data and database objects such as table definitions.

Figure 1-1 depicts client-server architecture: the client program (running on the client machine) is one tier and the server program (on the server machine) ...