Just Jack Posted November 21, 2009 Posted November 21, 2009 Buy it? Used book store maybe? Or go to Borders/Barnes & Noble and read something there.
Nanker Posted November 21, 2009 Posted November 21, 2009 From a Forum on SQL Servers. <= Linky. The first response to the OP's question is as follows: Ok, let's start with "What is a database?" A database is a storage and retrieval sytem to store information. Let's illustrate with a simple example. You have an application where people place orders. You need to store your customer information, product information and sales. Where do you put it? In a database. MS SQL Server is one of a small handful of enterprise class database applications. You could stoe this information in any number of formats: Text files, XML files, binary files for example. But databases (or Relational Databases) allow you to store much more information in much less space. They also have performance gains over other formats. Huge performance gains. So you store your customers, products and sales in a database, and create relationships between these entities. The short answer is that a database is a file (or set of files) where you store information. Powerful databases like SQL Server allow you to interact with your data in the most efficient possible way. The advantage of SQL Server over it's nearest competitors (DB2 and Oracle) is basically it's price point. It also comes out of the box with features not included in those products. It is highly scalable and runs on commodity hardware (ok I'm starting to sound like a commercial now lol). Download a free copy of SQL Server Express from Microsoft and start playing around with it. Try some online tutorials and post here with your questions. There's a lot of knowledgable and experienced folks here who'll be happy to help you on your way. I don't know SQL from shinola, but some of the people in that forum do. Good luck Pooj.
4BillsintheBurgh Posted November 21, 2009 Posted November 21, 2009 From a Forum on SQL Servers. <= Linky. The first response to the OP's question is as follows: Ok, let's start with "What is a database?" A database is a storage and retrieval sytem to store information. Let's illustrate with a simple example. You have an application where people place orders. You need to store your customer information, product information and sales. Where do you put it? In a database. MS SQL Server is one of a small handful of enterprise class database applications. You could stoe this information in any number of formats: Text files, XML files, binary files for example. But databases (or Relational Databases) allow you to store much more information in much less space. They also have performance gains over other formats. Huge performance gains. So you store your customers, products and sales in a database, and create relationships between these entities. The short answer is that a database is a file (or set of files) where you store information. Powerful databases like SQL Server allow you to interact with your data in the most efficient possible way. The advantage of SQL Server over it's nearest competitors (DB2 and Oracle) is basically it's price point. It also comes out of the box with features not included in those products. It is highly scalable and runs on commodity hardware (ok I'm starting to sound like a commercial now lol). Download a free copy of SQL Server Express from Microsoft and start playing around with it. Try some online tutorials and post here with your questions. There's a lot of knowledgable and experienced folks here who'll be happy to help you on your way. I don't know SQL from shinola, but some of the people in that forum do. Good luck Pooj. Unfortunately this info is about SQL Server which is a database product from Microsoft as opposed to the SQL language which I think is what pooj is looking for. And I didn't see any forum of that site which looked like it could help. Looking at the wiki page, you probably have to concentrate on the query, data type and data manipulation sections assuming you are interviewing for some type of analyst job where you may have to query tables. You show also understand what a primary and foreign key is. Don't have time right now to expound on this, maybe later I will if you want to ask some questions.
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