2024 update. This book teaches newcomers SQL, the language of databases, and includes examples for the most widely used database systems. In all its editions, this book has sold more than 150,000 copies and is popular with end users, students, data scientists, statisticians, epidemiologists, analysts, app developers, webmasters, and hobbyists. Thorough cross-referencing makes it a useful desktop reference for experienced SQL programmers.

- Covers Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, IBM Db2 Database, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Standard SQL.

- Hundreds of examples of varied difficulty encourage you to experiment and explore.

- Download the sample database and SQL source code to follow along with the examples.

- Organize your database in terms of the relational model.

- Master tables, columns, rows, and keys.

- Retrieve, filter, sort, and format data.

- Use functions and operators to transform and summarize data.

- Create, alter, and drop database tables.

- Answer hard questions by using joins, subqueries, constraints, conditional logic, and metadata.

- Create indexes that speed sorts and searches.

- Use views to secure and simplify data access.

- Insert, update, delete, and merge data.

- Execute transactions to maintain the integrity of your data.

- Avoid common pitfalls involving nulls.

- Troubleshoot and optimize queries.

- Learn advanced techniques that extend the power of SQL.

Contents

Introduction

1. Running SQL Programs

2. The Relational Model

3. SQL Basics

4. Retrieving Data from a Table

5. Operators and Functions

6. Summarizing and Grouping Data

7. Joins

8. Subqueries

9. Set Operations

10. Inserting, Updating, and Deleting Rows

11. Creating, Altering, and Dropping Tables

12. Indexes

13. Views

14. Transactions

15. Advanced SQL

About the Author

Chris Fehily is a statistician and author living in Carmel, California.