- Introduction
-
Table of Contents
- Microsoft SQL Server Defined
- Microsoft SQL Server Features
- Microsoft SQL Server Administration
-
Microsoft SQL Server Programming
- An Outline for Development
- Database
- Database Services
- Database Objects: Databases
- Database Objects: Tables
- Database Objects: Table Relationships
- Database Objects: Keys
- Database Objects: Constraints
- Database Objects: Data Types
- Database Objects: Views
- Database Objects: Stored Procedures
- Database Objects: Indexes
- Database Objects: User Defined Functions
- Database Objects: Triggers
- Database Design: Requirements, Entities, and Attributes
- Business Process Model Notation (BPMN) and the Data Professional
- Business Questions for Database Design, Part One
- Business Questions for Database Design, Part Two
- Database Design: Finalizing Requirements and Defining Relationships
- Database Design: Creating an Entity Relationship Diagram
- Database Design: The Logical ERD
- Database Design: Adjusting The Model
- Database Design: Normalizing the Model
- Creating The Physical Model
- Database Design: Changing Attributes to Columns
- Database Design: Creating The Physical Database
- Database Design Example: Curriculum Vitae
- NULLs
- The SQL Server Sample Databases
- The SQL Server Sample Databases: pubs
- The SQL Server Sample Databases: NorthWind
- The SQL Server Sample Databases: AdventureWorks
- The SQL Server Sample Databases: Adventureworks Derivatives
- UniversalDB: The Demo and Testing Database, Part 1
- UniversalDB: The Demo and Testing Database, Part 2
- UniversalDB: The Demo and Testing Database, Part 3
- UniversalDB: The Demo and Testing Database, Part 4
- Getting Started with Transact-SQL
- Transact-SQL: Data Definition Language (DDL) Basics
- Transact-SQL: Limiting Results
- Transact-SQL: More Operators
- Transact-SQL: Ordering and Aggregating Data
- Transact-SQL: Subqueries
- Transact-SQL: Joins
- Transact-SQL: Complex Joins - Building a View with Multiple JOINs
- Transact-SQL: Inserts, Updates, and Deletes
- An Introduction to the CLR in SQL Server 2005
- Design Elements Part 1: Programming Flow Overview, Code Format and Commenting your Code
- Design Elements Part 2: Controlling SQL's Scope
- Design Elements Part 3: Error Handling
- Design Elements Part 4: Variables
- Design Elements Part 5: Where Does The Code Live?
- Design Elements Part 6: Math Operators and Functions
- Design Elements Part 7: Statistical Functions
- Design Elements Part 8: Summarization Statistical Algorithms
- Design Elements Part 9:Representing Data with Statistical Algorithms
- Design Elements Part 10: Interpreting the Data—Regression
- Design Elements Part 11: String Manipulation
- Design Elements Part 12: Loops
- Design Elements Part 13: Recursion
- Design Elements Part 14: Arrays
- Design Elements Part 15: Event-Driven Programming Vs. Scheduled Processes
- Design Elements Part 16: Event-Driven Programming
- Design Elements Part 17: Program Flow
- Forming Queries Part 1: Design
- Forming Queries Part 2: Query Basics
- Forming Queries Part 3: Query Optimization
- Forming Queries Part 4: SET Options
- Forming Queries Part 5: Table Optimization Hints
- Using SQL Server Templates
- Transact-SQL Unit Testing
- Index Tuning Wizard
- Unicode and SQL Server
- SQL Server Development Tools
- The SQL Server Transact-SQL Debugger
- The Transact-SQL Debugger, Part 2
- Basic Troubleshooting for Transact-SQL Code
- An Introduction to Spatial Data in SQL Server 2008
- Performance Tuning
- Practical Applications
- Professional Development
- Application Architecture Assessments
- Business Intelligence
- Tips and Troubleshooting
- Additional Resources
Database
Last updated Mar 28, 2003.
The database API (sometimes called the SQL Server API) is the set of objects you load in a VB or C++ project (or the new .NET languages) to get at the data. The database API uses tabular result sets, which is the transport used to return data. The language you use to produce and access these results (called recordsets in the old systems and datasets in the new) is a superset of the Structured Query Language called Transact-SQL (T-SQL).
The Tabular Result Set API is encompassed by several technologies and libraries that have evolved over time. Here are a few of the well-known libraries:
Remote Data Objects (RDO), used in Visual Basic 5 and Visual C++
ActiveX Database Objects (ADO), used in Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual C++
ADO.NET
All have their pluses and minuses. I'll show you more about these concepts later on, as sections covering these topics are added to this Reference Guide.
Microsoft was an early adopter of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), and SQL Server has patches that allow XML documents to be consumed and produced by the database engine. It also supports XPath, the query language for XML structures. See the section on XML for more information.
