What is SQL?

SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It's a programming language used to communicate with and manage data stored in databases.

Whether you're a data analyst, software developer, or just working with data, SQL is the universal tool for accessing and manipulating data.

With SQL, you can:

• Retrieve specific data from large datasets
• Insert, update, or delete records
• Create and manage database structures (tables, views, indexes)

SQL was first developed in the 1970s by IBM researchers and later standardized by ANSI.

It became the foundation of many popular relational database systems like:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• SQLite
• Oracle Database
• Microsoft SQL Server

Assume you have a table called users with the following columns:

Here's a simple SQL query that gets data from a table:

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SELECT name, age
FROM users
WHERE age > 20;

This means:

• Get the name and age columns
• From the users table
• Where the user's age is greater than 20

The result will be:

Simply put, SQL is a language used to store large amounts of data in a spreadsheet-like format, similar to Excel, and to retrieve that data based on specific conditions.

SQL is widely used across industries, for example:

• A marketing team checks customer activity from a sales database.
• A web app fetches user data from a backend database.
• A data scientist prepares and filters data before modeling.

Mastering SQL can open up a lot of career opportunities and help you build a strong foundation in the data field.

Try running this SQL query in the code editor:

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SELECT id, name, email
FROM students;

This will select the id, name, and email columns from the students table.

You'll see every row and column in the table—like viewing a spreadsheet.