Features of SQL

Here’s what we’ll be discussing in this blog:

• SQL Features
• Characteristics of SQL

Features of SQL

SQL is one of the most demanding skills in the current world. Every day a huge amount of data is collected and one has to deal with these databases to create insightful information. Hence, it is important for us to learn SQL as it is a special-purpose database programming language that helps in generating useful strategies from a database and can easily interact with large and massive databases, no matter what the size is. These features of SQL make SQL the most powerful tool. Hence, here are some of the major SQL features which makes it a successful database programming language:

• Data Definition Language (DDL) – DDL contains commands that define data
  • create – Creates a table
    For example:
    create table
    tablex(attribute1 datatype…..attribute datatype);
  • drop – Deletes the table along with all the attributes
    For example:
    drop table tablex;
  • alter – Modifies the tables structures
    For example:
    alter table
    tablex add(new row1 datatype……new rown datatype);
  • rename – Changes the name of a table.
    For example:
    rename tablex to tabley;

• Data Manipulation Language (DML): DML contains commands that manipulate data
  • insert – Used after the create command to insert values in the table
    For example:
    insert into tabley values(attribute1 datatype);
    :
    :
    :
    insert into tabley values(attributen datatype);
  • delete – Deletes particular rows, tuples, or cardinality from the table
    For example:
    delete from tabley where condition;
  • update – Updates the tuples in the table
    For example:
    update tabley set tuplename=’attributename’;
  • Triggers – Performed when particular conditions are met on data. It has three parts.
    • Event – The change that activates the trigger
    • Condition – The test or query that is executed after the trigger is activated
    • Action – The procedure that is executed after the condition is met true

• Client-server execution and remote database access – SQL commands can control how a client application is allowed to access the database remotely.
• Security and authentication – SQL can make sure that only specific details of the database are visible to the user while the entire database is secured by DBMS.
• Embedded SQL – SQL can embed languages like COBOL, C, Java, etc. to query at runtime
• Transaction Control Language – TCL is used to control the transactions with commands like:
  • commit – Saves the database when it’s inconsistent
    commit;
  • rollback – Rolls back to the previous transaction
    rollback;
  • savepoint – Goes back to the previous transaction without going through the entire transaction
    savepoint;

Characteristics of SQL

• High Performance
  SQL provides high-performance programming capability for highly transactional, heavy workload, and high usage database systems. SQL programming gives various ways to describe the data more analytically.

• High Availability
  SQL is compatible with databases like MS Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle Database, SAP HANA, SAP Adaptive Server, etc. All of these relational database management systems support SQL and it is easy to create an application extension for procedural programming and various other SQL functions which are additional features thus converting SQL into a powerful tool.

• Scalability and Flexibility
  SQL provides Scalability and Flexibility. It is very easy to create new tables and previously created or not used tables can be dropped or deleted in a database.

• Robust Transactional Support
  SQL programming can handle large records and manage numerous transactions.
• High Security
  It is very easy to provide permissions on tables, procedures, and views, hence, SQL gives security to your data.
• Comprehensive Application Development
  SQL is used by many programmers to program apps to access a database. No matter what the size of an organization, SQL works for every small or large organization.
• Management Ease
  SQL is used in almost every Relational Database Management System. “Select“, “Create”, “Insert”, “Drop”, “Update”, and “Delete” are the standard and common SQL commands that help us to manage large amounts of data from a database very quickly and efficiently.
• Open Source
  SQL is an open-source programming language for building relational database management system

All these features of SQL make it a robust and primary language for many organizations to manage their large databases.