KillerPHP: Introduction to SQL

SQL is short for: Structured Query Language

SQL is the language of relational databases ... databases like MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server and many others.

SQL allows you to 'talk' to a relational database - that means being able to manage the data being stored in the database.

SQL is a computer language that has been around since the 1970's and it is now a standard that is used in every relational database . It has become so popular that SQL (or an SQL-like language) is used even in some databases that are not relational.

Learning SQL

SQL is not too hard to learn and was orginally designed so that even non techies could use it. So have faith!

That said, advanced SQL can be complex and tricky and as such, there are people out there who are highly paid experts in this area - especially when you take into account the extensions/additions to SQL that you see in databases like Oracle.

PHP and SQL

Fortunately for us PHP nerds, we don't need to become SQL gurus to effectively use SQL (and MySQL) in our PHP work. To get us going, all we need to learn is the four basic SQL commands:

1. insert
2. select
3. update
4. delete