Introduction to SQL Server
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SQL stands for Structured Query Language. As per Wikipedia, SQL is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS), or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system (RDSMS). It is particularly useful in handling structured data, i.e., data incorporating relations among entities and variables (Source).
Data can be inserted, searched, updated, or deleted from the database records using SQL. SQL can be beneficial in maintaining and even optimizing the databases.
As the name suggests, SQL is capable of handling only the structured type of data, which means data that can be represented in rows and columns format like dates, numbers, and strings. On the other hand, unstructured data can be represented in the form of images, videos, speech, or text. But what kind of information do these Databases hold?
They can hold a variety of information or maybe anything that you could think of—ranging from catalogs of product, customer information, images metadata, text data, etc.
Let's say you want to automate the process of Resume screening, and you would like to store the name, education, job experience, and application date of the candidate who has applied for an open job position. You would need a database to be designed which would store the above information related to the candidate, and to achieve this; you will need an SQL server.
In order for the information to be easily accessible and understandable, you need database management systems or relational database management system. DBMS can be helpful in a variety of ways, like sorting information or linking databases to each other, provide reports about any updates in the database, and even manage administrative access to the database. Some of the most popular SQL databases are: