Book Image

SQL Server 2017 Developer???s Guide

Book Image

SQL Server 2017 Developer???s Guide

Overview of this book

Microsoft SQL Server 2017 is a milestone in Microsoft's data platform timeline, as it brings in the power of R and Python for machine learning and containerization-based deployment on Windows and Linux. This book prepares you for advanced topics by starting with a quick introduction to SQL Server 2017's new features. Then, it introduces you to enhancements in the Transact-SQL language and new database engine capabilities before switching to a different technology: JSON support. You will take a look at the security enhancements and temporal tables. Furthermore, the book focuses on implementing advanced topics, including Query Store, columnstore indexes, and In-Memory OLTP. Toward the end of the book, you'll be introduced to R and how to use the R language with Transact-SQL for data exploration and analysis. You'll also learn to integrate Python code into SQL Server and graph database implementations as well as the deployment options on Linux and SQL Server in containers for development and testing. By the end of this book, you will be armed to design efficient, high-performance database applications without any hassle.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to SQL Server 2017
Index

DDL, DML, and programmable objects


As a developer, you are often also responsible for creating the database objects. Of course, in an application, you need also to insert, update, and delete the data. In order to maintain data integrity, meaning enforcing data to comply with business rules, you need to implement constraints. In our quick review of the data definition language (DDL) and data modification language (DML) elements, we will look at the following statements:

  • CREATE for creating tables and programmatic objects
  • ALTER to add constraints to a table
  • DROP to drop an object
  • INSERT to insert new data
  • UPDATE to change existing data
  • DELETE to delete the data

In a SQL Server database, you can also use programmatic objects. You can use triggers for advanced constraints or to maintain some redundant data such as aggregated data. You can use other programmatic objects for data abstraction, for an intermediate layer between the actual data and an application. The following programmatic objects are...