The basics of SQL server

[Chrissirhc]

This is v naive question, but bare with me I'm learning.

I'm looking for a simple intuitive answer.

SQL server what exactly does it do?

Is it a package that creates and manages a database. I assume that it does stores the database on the hard disk in some sort of optimised format.

Then do we use a devopment language to query the database and display the results or to even update it at a simple level. Furthermore to use this data and analyse it or show it to a user.

I really need an exact, but simple answer to this question.

Thanks

Chris

 

[chiph]

> I really need an exact, but simple answer to this question. <

Yes.



What SQL Server does is as you've surmised -- it stores the data on a computer so that programs and people (locally and remote) are able to access it without tripping each other up.

Back when the standard in PC databases was dBase-II, people accessing it over a network would occasionally screw up the database because they were accessing the same records at the same time. Because dBase wasn't network-aware, it'd let you do this, and afterwards you'd have to restore from backup. Made a lot of people unhappy, but most of the time they were lucky and were able to get some work done.

What a piece of software like SQL Server does is manage this process following the ACID rules. (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability -- see

http://www.archwing.com/technet/technet_ACID.html).

This way your changes don't affect your neighbor, and that they're written to disk without being lost.

Chip H.

 

[sguslan]

Further,

1 -- SQL server is an ANSI SQL(structured query language) compliant which means, we use development tools to access it using SQL. An example of sql is:

[Select name, age from employees]

which results in extracting the name and age of all employees from a database table.

2-- SQL server stores data using a relational model developed by IBM, which, basically stores data in 2 dimentional tables[rows and columns] and sets relations between tables through one or more fields[or columns].

Visit

http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp

Salim