Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours

By Ron Plew and Ryan Stephens

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: A SQL Concepts Overview
  • Hour 1. Welcome to the World of SQL
  • Part II: Building Your Database
  • Hour 2. Defining Data Structures
  • Hour 3. Managing Database Objects
  • Hour 4. The Normalization Process
  • Hour 5. Manipulating Data
  • Hour 6. Managing Database Transactions
  • Part III: Getting Effective Results from Queries
  • Hour 7. Introduction to the Database Query
  • Hour 8. Using Operators to Categorize Data
  • Hour 9. Summarizing Data Results from a Query
  • Hour 10. Sorting and Grouping Data
  • Hour 11. Restructuring the Appearance of Data
  • Hour 12. Understanding Dates and Times
    • How Is a Date Stored?
    • Date Functions
    • Date Conversions
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Part IV: Building Sophisticated Database Queries
  • Hour 13. Joining Tables in Queries
  • Hour 14. Using Subqueries to Define Unknown Data
  • Hour 15. Combining Multiple Queries into One
  • Part V: SQL Performance Tuning
  • Hour 16. Using Indexes to Improve Performance
  • Hour 17. Improving Database Performance
  • Part VI: Using SQL to Manage Users and Security
  • Hour 18. Managing Database Users
  • Hour 19. Managing Database Security
  • Part VII: Summarized Data Structures
  • Hour 20. Creating and Using Views and Synonyms
  • Hour 21. Working with the System Catalog
  • Part VIII: Applying SQL Fundamentals in Today's World
  • Hour 22. Advanced SQL Topics
  • Hour 23. Extending SQL to the Enterprise, the Internet, and the Intranet
  • Hour 24. Extensions to Standard SQL
  • Part IX: Appendixes
  • Appendix A. Common SQL Commands
  • Appendix B. Using MySQL for Exercises
  • Appendix C. Answers to Quizzes and Exercises
  • Appendix D. CREATE TABLE Statements for Book Examples
  • Appendix E. INSERT Statements for Data in Book Examples
  • Appendix F. Glossary
  • Appendix G. Bonus Exercises

Q&A

1. Why do implementations choose to deviate from a single standard set of data types and functions?

   Implementations differ as far as the representation of data types and functions mainly because of the way each vendor has chosen to internally store data and provide the most efficient means of data retrieval. However, all implementations should provide the same means for the storage of date and time values based on the required elements prescribed by ANSI, such as the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and so on.

2. What if I want to store date and time information differently than what is available in my implementation?

   Dates can be stored in nearly any type of format if you choose to define the column for a date as a variable length character. The main thing to remember is that when comparing date values to one another, it is usually required to first convert the character string representation of the date to a valid DATETIME format for your implementation; that is, if appropriate conversion functions are available.

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