SQL SERVER

SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standard interactive and programming language for getting information from and updating a database. Although SQL is both an ANSI and an ISO standard, many database products support SQL with proprietary extensions to the standard language. Queries take the form of a command language that lets you select, insert, update, find out the location of data, and so forth. There is also a programming interface.
SQL Server is a Microsoft product used to manage and store information. Technically, SQL Server is a “relational database management system” (RDMS). Broken apart, this term means two things. First, that data stored inside SQL Server will be housed in a “relational database”, and second, that SQL Server is an entire “management system”, not just a database. SQL itself stands for Structured Query Language. This is the language used to manage and administer the database server.
So now that SQL Server has been broken into two terms, a “relational database” and a “management system”, let’s explore the first. There is a very technical definition for what is or is not a relational database. For details on this definition, do an internet search for the terms “Edgar Codd” (who first proposed the relational model), or the terms “relational database tuples”. While there are databases that are not relational, most of the products on the market today (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and MS Access to name a few) are relational database products. This means that data is stored inside a structure called a “Table”, which uses Rows and Columns (like a spreadsheet). Unlike a spreadsheet though, the data rows stored inside a Table is not in any particular order. To explain this last statement, think of a typical spreadsheet column, if we wanted to sort the data in the first column of a spreadsheet alphabetically, we would simply click the first column and then would click the Sort button.