How to use SQL?

This is part of “An intro to SQL” series of posts, with content from the Enki app. If you stumbled upon this, you can start from the beginning.

OK, now you know what SQL is, and why you need it. So how do we get started?

In terms of setup, there isn’t a universal program or app that you install. Different databases have different connection methods.

As you make progress, some of the Learn More links will show you how to connect to the different databases.

Over time, quite a few flavors¹ of SQL were created. But the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has adopted SQL as a standard since 1986.

This means that any code written in ANSI should work with any flavor. So for the rest of this course, we’ll teach you the ANSI Standard SQL.

Now, remember the first piece of SQL code we showed you earlier?

This code retrieves all the data from the users table. It’s often used to inspect what’s inside a database.

Don’t take our word for it. You can try it out yourself. Go to the playground and press run. If you’re feeling adventurous, try writting some different commands and see what happens.

Enough talk! From the next article, things will get exciting and practical.

Pretty much all the insights from now on will teach you how to build more complicated and useful queries, and how to create your own tables.


Andrei Calabangiu

Content Manager

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