Overview

WIP

This is a project to review SQL: run through the standard and explain what each feature is, explain the jargon terms, explain why the feature exists, and explain the relationship with real sql products - standard feature, possibly with different syntax/ different semantics/ different names/jargon; or one of those SQL Standard things which bears no relationship to reality.

Maybe provide a little history and context also, with a little bit of relational theory.

Glossary for SQL

SQL: The Complete Reference, 3rd Edition, James R. Groff, Paul N. Weinberg, Andrew J. Oppel

This is a comprehensive book which covers up to the SQL:1999 standard.


SQL in a Nutshell, Kevin Kline, Brand Hunt, Daniel Kline

This is another good book which covers some of the SQL:2003 and SQL:2008 standards. This means it covers a few newer things like window functions which 'SQL: The Complete Reference' doesn’t. It also compares some main SQL product dialects.


SQL A Comparative Survey, Hugh Darwen
http://bookboon.com/en/sql-a-comparative-survey-ebook

This is a book about SQL from a relational theory perspective.


SQL and Relational Theory, 2nd Edition, Chris Date

This also covers SQL from a partly theoretical perspective.


A Guide to the SQL Standard, C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen

This is a fantastic book for covering all the little details of the SQL standard in depth. It only covers up to SQL:92.


There are several other good books by Chris Date, some with Hugh Darwen and others, for instance 'Introduction to Database Systems', 'Temporal Data & the Relational Model, Databases', 'Types and the Relational Model'. Only the first one (Introduction to Database Systems) really relates to SQL.


Database Systems: The Complete Book, Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeff Ullman, and Jennifer Widom.

This book is very comprehensive and has some interesting sections.


Some of the SQL draft standards are available to download for free (follow the links on the wikipedia page for SQL or try google). They are a little tricky to read and understand. You can find some stuff at these links. There is also the grammars from the draft standards below on this page.

SQL products' manuals

IBM DB2 10.5 SQL Reference Volume 1

TODO


Microsoft SQL Server 2012 TSQL reference online. I didn’t find a PDF for this.

No PDF for the Postgres manual either, but the web pages are very readable.


TODO: MySQL, Redshift, Netezza, Vertica, Vectorwise, Infobright, MemSQL, FoundationDB, Dataphor, EnterpriseDB, Pivotal, Informix, Ingres, MariaDB, SQLite, Firebird, MonetDB, Nonstop SQL?, some small subset of the SAP SQL DBMSs (maxdb, anywhere, hana?).

SQL Grammars