Introduction to SQL

Prerequisites

The target audience for this course is all IT professionals, both business and systems professionals. Among the specific groups for whom this course will be helpful are: • Business and non-IT professionals • Application designers and database developers • Business Intelligence (BI) analysts and consumers • Database administrators • Web server administrators

Objectives

The first portion of this course considers the logical models upon which a relational database is based and the various configurations and environments in which you may work with a database. The next segment focuses on the actual SQL syntax for writing database queries. You will begin with the simplest of queries and then proceed onto moderately complex query scenarios. Finally, the course covers the DDL, DML and transaction control portions of the SQL language that allow one to create, maintain and manipulate application database objects and application data. Since SQL is an industry standard language, many of the topics presented and many of the skills you will acquire will be applicable to other database platforms, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Ingres SQL, IBM DB2, the open-source databases MySQL and PostgreSQL, and others.

COURSE SETUP

UNLESS OTHERWISE REQUIRED BY CLIENTS, THE COURSE IS RUN USING THE AZURE DATA STUDIO ON A TRAINING DATABASE WE PROVIDE. PARTICIPANTS WILL NEED TO INSTALL THE FREE AZURE DATA STUDIO APP.

RELATIONAL DATABASES & DATA MODELS

• ABOUT DATA MODELS
• ABOUT THE RELATIONAL MODEL
• THE ELECTRONICS DATA MODEL
• ABOUT THE RELATIONAL DBMS

SELECTION & SETUP OF THE DATABASE INTERFACE

• CONSIDERING AVAILABLE TOOLS • SELECTING THE APPROPRIATE TOOL • DATABASE CONNECTIONS • SETUP QUERYING TOOLS

USING THE DATABASE INTERFACE

• ABOUT BIND AND SUBSTITUTION VARIABLES • USING AZURE STUDIO, SQL DEVELOPER AND OTHER INTERFACES

INTRODUCTION TO THE SQL LANGUAGE

• ABOUT THE SQL LANGUAGE • CHARACTERISTICS OF SQL • INTRODUCING SQL USING SELECT • SQL RULES THEORY

THE SELECT STATEMEENT

• THE SELECT STATEMENT • DISTINCT / UNIQUE KEYWORD • USING ALIAS NAMES

RESTRICTING RESULTS WITH THE WHERE

• ABOUT LOGICAL OPERATORS
• EQUALITY OPERATOR
• BOOLEAN OPERATORS
• REGEXP_LIKE()
• IN OPERATOR

SORTING DATA WITH THE ORDER BY CLAUSE

• ABOUT THE ORDER BY CLAUSE
• MULTIPLE COLUMN SORTS
• SPECIFY THE SORT SEQUENCE
• ABOUT NULL VALUES WITHIN SORTS
• USING COLUMN ALIASES

PSEUDO COLUMNS, FUNCTIONS & TOP-N QUERIES

• ROWID PSEUDO COLUMN
• ORA_ROWSCN PSEUDO COLUMN
• ROWNUM PSEUDO COLUMN
• ABOUT THE BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS
• SYSDATE
• USER & UID
• SESSIONTIMEZONE Function
• USING THE DUAL TABLE
• ROW LIMITING & TOP-N QUERIES
• FETCH FIRST x ROWS ONLY Clause
• OFFSET x ROWS Clause
• FETCH ... PERCENT Clause
• The WITH TIES Option

JOINING TABLES

• ABOUT JOINS
• INNER JOIN
• REFLEXIVE JOIN
• NON-KEY JOIN
• OUTER JOIN

USING THE SET OPERATORS

• ABOUT THE SET OPERATORS
• SQL SET OPERATOR EXAMPLES
• UNION Example
• INTERSECT Example
• MINUS Example
• UNION ALL

USING SUB- QUERIES

• FINDING DATA WITH SUB-QUERIES
• STANDARD SUB-QUERIES
• CORRELATED SUB-QUERIES
• The EXISTS Operator

AGGREGATING DATA WITHIN GROUPS

• ABOUT SUMMARY GROUPS
• FIND GROUPS WITHIN THE TABLES
• SELECT DATA FROM THE BASE TABLES
• SELECT GROUPS FROM THE RESULTS

USE DDL TO CREATE & MANAGE TABLES

• CREATE TABLE STATEMENT
• COLUMN DATA TYPES
• NOT NULL
• DEFAULT
• DESCRIBE
• ALTER TABLE STATEMENT
• DROP TABLE STATEMENT
• TABLE DDL USING SQL DEVELOPER
• ALTER USER STATEMENT
• ALTER SESSION STATEMENT
• NLS_LANGUAGE
• NLS_DATE

USE DML TO MANIPULATE DATA

• THE INSERT STATEMENT • THE DELETE STATEMENT • THE UPDATE STATEMENT • ABOUT TRANSACTIONS • TRANSACTION ROLLBACK • TRANSACTION COMMIT • TRANSACTION SAVEPOINT • THE SET TRANSACTION STATEMENT • SET TRANSACTION READ ONLY STATEMENT RULES