[clark33]

Hi,

Is Structured Query Language easy to pick up, with a personal background of strong first level and basic second level IT knowledge. I understand theory - the reasoning for variables and if statements and so forth. What i need to know is - can I grasp the practicality of this quickly by using the different retrieval commands/strings. The timescale i need to grasp the basics of this would be over 10 days.

Thanks for your opinions..

[Baez]

Sure you can. SQL is very simple and you can learn the basics easily within 10 days.

[kmote]

SQL is not a "real" programming language, it's a way to get data from a database. The DBMS you are running will have a client library* so that your app can access the data on the server. SQL itself is very easy to pick up for the most part and if you are simply using it through a client provided in your DBMS package (rather than programming something yourself) then you will have no problems whatsoever.

* The client library will include functions for querying the database and your SQL will form one of the parameters for that function (for security reasons you should be careful about this, more info can be given if needed)

[clark33]

I really appreciate the replies. So, what im grasping is that the application client side will not hold the data - as it sits on the server side (due to size?). I would be using this strictly for reporting, so no programing. I should be ok then, from what your saying. I'll have to wire into some tuturials to bring me up to speed.

[Baez]

MSDN is the best place to start learning. And yes it is the server that holds all data.