Book Image

The SQL Workshop

By : Frank Solomon, Prashanth Jayaram, Awni Al Saqqa
Book Image

The SQL Workshop

By: Frank Solomon, Prashanth Jayaram, Awni Al Saqqa

Overview of this book

Many software applications are backed by powerful relational database systems, meaning that the skills to be able to maintain a SQL database and reliably retrieve data are in high demand. With its simple syntax and effective data manipulation capabilities, SQL enables you to manage relational databases with ease. The SQL Workshop will help you progress from basic to advanced-level SQL queries in order to create and manage databases successfully. This Workshop begins with an introduction to basic CRUD commands and gives you an overview of the different data types in SQL. You'll use commands for narrowing down the search results within a database and learn about data retrieval from single and multiple tables in a single query. As you advance, you'll use aggregate functions to perform calculations on a set of values, and implement process automation using stored procedures, functions, and triggers. Finally, you'll secure your database against potential threats and use access control to keep your data safe. Throughout this Workshop, you'll use your skills on a realistic database for an online shop, preparing you for solving data problems in the real world. By the end of this book, you'll have built the knowledge, skills and confidence to creatively solve real-world data problems with SQL.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Views

As a business grows, its financial management and reporting needs will probably grow as well. Management will turn to the database for answers. Every database query will be different, but eventually, it will become clear that the same, or very similar, SELECT statements seem to come up again and again. The same SELECT statement could show up in a subquery, or maybe in a stored procedure, which is something we'll learn about soon. That statement could become really complicated, with a lot of tables, outer joins, CASE statements of its own. If we could somehow save that SELECT statement and then use it like a table as a basis for other SQL statements and queries, we could save a lot of time and effort. SQL views will help solve this problem.

SQL views can encapsulate complex queries, exposing the columns in a much cleaner way for use by other queries. In other words, a view can join multiple tables together in a defined, structured way, and substitute all of that complexity...