Is SQL a programming language?

SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It is a set of instructions you use to query databases and extract relevant information based on the criteria you need.

Take this SQL query, for example:

SELECT first_name, last_name, student_id, attendance_status FROM attendance_records WHERE attendance_status = 1 AND date = '01/19/2021'

What does this statement do? It extracts first names, last names, student IDs and attendance status from a table called “attendance_records”, where attendance is marked “1” instead of “0” (meaning the student was present), on a selected date.

The query gives you a list of all the students who were present on that date. Before you can understand a typical SQL query, you need a basic knowledge of how databases are organized and how data is stored in them.

And yes, if someone asks you “is SQL a programming language?”, your answer can be yes, it is. To show why, you need to define what a programming language is, and we will cover that shortly. But first, the basics.

What is data?

Data can be structured or unstructured. Even data that appears unstructured often shows a structure when you step back. Either way, for data to make sense, it needs to be structured.

Structured means it follows a pattern; otherwise it is hard to keep in order and even harder to get the information you need. In an address book, you have the first name, last name, phone number, email and address.

The address may be further divided into the house number, street, neighborhood, landmark, city, ZIP code, state and country. Whenever you make a new entry in your address book, you fill in these fields.

You may not fill every field, but the structure stays more or less the same. This is called a structured database. In a structured database, you always know how many fields there are and what data each field contains.

You have probably seen an Excel sheet. It has rows and columns. The columns represent the fields (the data names) and the rows hold the actual records.

Take the attendance_records example above (shortly you will learn the difference between a table and a database). In an Excel sheet, first_name, last_name, student_id, attendance_status and date would each be a separate column.

The actual information is then added in rows under those columns. When data is organized in rows and columns, it is called a table.

Columns define the fields and rows hold the data for those fields. Because this data can be represented in tabular form, these datasets are called tables. A database can contain many tables.

For example, a school database can have a table with basic student details such as first name, last name, home address and grade, and a second table for each student’s attendance.

There can be separate tables for teachers, the timetable and fees. In fact, a school database can have hundreds of tables for different needs, including finance and bookkeeping, inventory, staff, transport, security, maintenance, stationery, the library and so on.

Why not just one table? That brings us to the next topic we need to cover to understand SQL.

Why do we need relational databases?

As the name suggests, relational databases let you set up relationships. A typical database can contain millions of records, sometimes billions. Maintaining and extracting information from that many records is overwhelming if the information isn’t stored properly.

One of the biggest benefits of relational databases is that they eliminate data redundancy. You don’t enter the same data twice. Without a relational database, you might have to put everything in a single table, creating lots of repeated data.

Take the student attendance example again. A school needs to keep basic student details such as first name, last name, home address, guardian contact number, date of joining and current class.

What happens when you want to enter the attendance for “01/19/2021”? Without a relational database, to record a student’s attendance you would have to enter all their details first, and then the attendance record.

Every time you enter attendance, you would re-enter all the student details. Similarly, if a library book is issued to a student, you would have to enter all the student’s details and then the details of the book.

And not just the student: all the book’s details too. When the student returns the book, you would enter everything again.

Now suppose you assign a student to a class taught by a teacher who is borrowing a library book. You would be entering all the teacher’s records, all the student’s records, all the book’s records and every related record.

Multiply that by dozens of teachers, thousands of students and hundreds of thousands of books. You get the point. The answer? RDBMS: relational database management systems.

When you create a student table with each student’s basic details, you assign each record a unique student ID. That ID is never assigned to any other student, whether or not the student is still at the school.

Every book in the library table has a unique book ID. Every teacher in the teacher table has a unique teacher ID. Every class in your school system has a unique class ID.

So whenever you assign a student to a class taught by a particular teacher who borrows a book from the library, all you enter are the IDs of those entities.

All the tables are related by their IDs. The information attached to an ID lives in its own table and is only retrieved when needed. All databases that support SQL commands are relational databases.

What defines a programming language?

To see SQL as a programming language, you first need to understand what a programming language is. A programming language is a set of instructions that a computer interprets and then acts on.

For the computer to follow these instructions, it must understand the language. And for the language to give instructions, it must understand the architecture of the computer.

So there must be understanding on both ends. Usually this is solved by creating an executable. For example, a C++ program is compiled into machine code that the machine understands.

Whatever language you use, as long as the program is converted into an executable, it can run on a computer. An interpreter achieves the same thing: as long as the interpreter understands the language, it can interpret the commands and make the computer do its bidding.

PHP, for instance, is interpreted: the interpreter goes through each command, translates it for the machine, and the machine executes it.

Unlike humans, computers cannot guess, judge or infer, so you need to give them very specific instructions. If the instructions are not specific, they won’t work.

So a programming language is a set of instructions written so that a computer can understand them. SQL is also a set of instructions. Above, we used the “SELECT” command to retrieve data from the “attendance_records” table.

The SQL interpreter understands “SELECT”, and you need to use that command. What if you write “TELL ME” or “fetch me information about…”? You will get an error.

To retrieve data, the SQL interpreter only understands “SELECT”. The command also has a well-defined syntax: you list the fields, the table name and the criteria in a specific order, using correct table names, field names and conditions.

Miss a comma or mix up numeric and text fields, and you get an error. This is why SQL is called a structured query language: you give the database structured queries, and your commands are executed based on them.

This is why SQL counts as a programming language.

A short history of SQL

SQL was originally called SEQUEL, which stood for “Structured English Query Language”. Dr. E. F. Codd published a paper titled “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”, which led to the definition of relational database management systems.

IBM was the first company to work extensively on the model. It was later renamed SQL, though many people still pronounce it “sequel”. SQL is the standard language for relational databases all over the world.

It is standardized by ANSI. IBM researchers Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce designed the original language, and a company called Relational Software Inc. released the first commercial SQL-based relational database management system in 1979.

That company was later renamed Oracle. IBM’s own SQL system was called DB2.

Microsoft released its own SQL Server in 1989. One of the most widely used SQL systems in the world is MySQL, which is open source.

Once you install MySQL on your server, you can create databases and tables and run full SQL queries.

How is SQL used?

We have explained that SQL is a programming language, but you cannot write standalone applications or software in SQL alone. You use SQL commands within the software you are building.

Take WordPress, for example. It is a blogging platform and content management system that stores your content in a database. When you create a page or a blog post in WordPress, the title, URL, category and body text are all stored in different database tables.

When you visit a WordPress link, the page doesn’t exist as HTML at that moment. It is generated in real time from the contents of the database. WordPress relies completely on MySQL.

WordPress is written in PHP. SQL commands are issued from within the PHP code to connect to the database and its tables. Another set of SQL commands extracts the needed information and displays it to the visitor.

This is one way of using SQL: queries embedded in the program you are writing. Different languages handle SQL commands in their own way, but the core SQL queries stay the same whichever language you use.

If a mobile app fetches information from a remote database (often MySQL), the SQL commands are embedded in the app’s code. The other way is to run SQL commands directly at a database prompt.

If you work directly with a relational database management system, you may have an interface for it. For example, if your web hosting account has cPanel, its MySQL section opens phpMyAdmin, an interface for working with your MySQL databases directly.

Through this interface, you can run SQL queries. There is also a tool called HeidiSQL. After installing it and connecting it to your database server, you can run any SQL command.

You can also create and manage databases and their tables. Organizations that use SQL servers often have their own ways of interacting with their databases, mostly through custom-built software.

Is SQL difficult or easy to learn?

SQL is a programming language, but unlike other languages, you don’t build software with it. You can, however, write SQL scripts, which are comparatively small programs.

A script is a “batch” of SQL commands, organized logically, in the order you would run them yourself at an SQL console.

Suppose you must run a series of SQL commands every day:

• SQL command 1
• SQL command 2
• SQL command 3
• …
• SQL command 22

You need to run these 22 commands every day in the same order. Instead of running them one by one, you can put them in a file in that order and simply execute the file.

This is normally called a .sql file. Whether SQL is hard or easy depends on the level of database work you need to do. A relational database can get complicated when you need to join many tables using intricate logic.

A report that queries just one table can be quite easy. A query across 2 tables is slightly harder. As the number of tables grows, so does the complexity of the query.

Suppose you want a list of houses damaged by a hurricane in the Brownsville area of Texas, and the number of people who received compensation of more than $5,000.

Then, based on that, you want to know which universities those people’s children attended. Assuming that information exists in a database, it is going to be a complex query.

The language itself is not difficult, but the queries you need to write can be baffling. So the question is less about how hard SQL is and more about how comfortable you are with intricate logic.

Is it worth learning SQL?

Frankly, if you need to work with relational databases, you need to know SQL. If you want to build mobile apps that connect to a remote database server, you need to learn SQL.

For a data scientist, SQL is a must. If you work with big data and need to analyze lots of complex data, SQL helps. If you want a job as a database administrator or data analyst, you definitely need SQL.

Whichever language you learn, SQL is a fundamental skill. Without it, you cannot handle databases. Google, Amazon, Apple, WordPress, Shopify, Netflix and countless other companies use SQL every day.

Scientists and researchers use SQL for research and analysis. Languages rarely come with their own database commands, so whenever you need to access structured data, you embed SQL in your code.

Learn SQL if you want to become a business analyst, data scientist, software engineer, database administrator, QA tester, researcher or even a journalist.

So yes, SQL is worth learning if you want a career in technology.

What are the different flavors of SQL?

SQL is a language standard; on its own, it doesn’t run anything. It comes to life through a database system, and there are many SQL database systems, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

The most widely used is MySQL, mainly because it is free and open source. Install a stack like XAMPP or LAMP and you get a MySQL server for creating databases for your web applications, software and mobile apps.

Oracle offers a commercial RDBMS, and many large organizations use it. Microsoft offers SQL Server.

SQL Server was originally available only on Windows, but it now runs on Linux too. Its SQL dialect is called T-SQL, short for Transact-SQL.

In the open-source category, you have PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite. With a commercial system, the vendor helps when you run into problems.

With open-source solutions, you take care of everything yourself, including setup, the interface and integration.

Why get help with SQL homework?

There are good reasons to get expert help with SQL homework. Whether you want to become an analyst, a database administrator or a programmer, a worked solution from an expert can save you time and speed up your learning.

Getting help doesn’t mean you aren’t serious about your studies. Often you are looking for clarity you can’t find in your textbook, or from your instructor in the time available.

As your SQL coursework progresses, assignments get more demanding. They require not just syntax but an understanding of how to structure large databases and retrieve information efficiently.

For students facing these challenges, expert help can be a smart move. At DoMyProgrammingHomework.io, our engineers specialize in SQL and database assignments.

Whether it’s writing intricate queries or designing normalized schemas, we deliver a reference solution with a written explanation. When the workload piles up and you need someone to help with your do my programming homework request, upload the prompt to see a price in under a minute.

Once you have the reference solution, go through it carefully and you’ll understand the concepts from a practical, real-world perspective. Homework is meant to strengthen your understanding, but a lot of time often goes into simply figuring out where to start.

When that happens, learning takes a back seat to effort. A clear worked example from a service like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io solves several problems at once.

You deepen your understanding of the subject, you get unstuck faster, and you can use your time more constructively. Always follow your course policy on what outside help is allowed.