About Structured Query Language
- SQL was first implemented in IBM's System R in
the late 1970's.
- SQL is the de-facto standard query language
for creating and manipulating data in
- There are some differences, but much
of SQL is standard across MS Access,
Oracle, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL.
- SQL is either specified by a command-line tool
or is embedded into a general purpose
programming language such as Cobol,"C",
Pascal, or accessible via modules as in Java, PHP and Perl.
- In Perl, we use the DBI interface.
"DBI is a database access Application Programming Interface (API) for
the Perl Language. The DBI API
Specification defines a set of functions, variables and
conventions that provide a consistent database
interface independent of the actual database being used."
--Tim Bunce, the architect and author of DBI
- SQL is a standardized language monitored by
the American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) as well as by National Institute of
- ANSI 1990 - SQL 1 standard
- ANSI 1992 - SQL 2 Standard (sometimes
- ANSI and ISO SQL:1999, also know as SQL 3, added some object oriented concepts
- ANSI and ISO SQL:2003, introduced XML-related features
- ANSI and ISO SQL:2006
- ANSI and ISO SQL:2008
- SQL has two major parts:
- Data Definition Language
(DDL) is used to create (define) data
structures such as tables and indexes,
- Data Manipulation Language
(DML) is used to store, retrieve and
update data from tables.
Some of the material on this page has been extracted from a
Database Management Systems Course
, Baruch College, City University of New York.
Copyright, 1997, 1998 Richard Holowczak
Table of Contents.