The Structured Query Language, SQL is a query language which is used with relational databases.
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This chapter starts by describing some of the terms used in data processing and how they relate to SQL. The later part of this chapter describes relational databases and how SQL is used to query them.
A Collection of Related Data": Databases and Database Management Systems.
In very general terms, a database is a collection of related data. Notice the word related, this implies that the collection of letters on this page do not by themselves constitute a database. But if we think of them as a collection of letters arranged to form words, then they can be conceptualised as data in a database. Using similar reasoning, we can also say that a tome such as a telephone directory is also a database. It is a database first, because it is a collection of letters that form words and second, because it is an alphabetical listing of people's names, their addresses and their telephone numbers. How we think of a database depends on what use we want to make of the information that it contains.
So far, we have talked about a database in it's broadest sense. This very general definition is not what most people mean when they talk about a database. In this electronic age, the word database has become synonymous with the term "computerised database". Collins English Dictionary describes a database as "A store of a large amount of information, esp. in a form that can be handled by a computer." In this book, we will be dealing only with computerised databases. In keeping with popular trend though, we will be using the word database to refer to a computerised database.
The Database as a Collection of Tables": Relational databases and SQL.
In the early days of computerised databases, all large database systems conformed to either the network data model or the hierarchical data model. We will not be discussing the technical details of these models except to say that they are quite complex and not very flexible. One of the main drawbacks of these databases was that in order to retrieve information, the user had to have an idea of where in the database the data was stored.
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