Learning SQL

This post will help you to kick start SQL learning. There are many tutorials on net that will teach you SQL in 9 minutes. All you learn is only theory. You never get to try out even a single SQL query that you learn. So if you just wanna learn theory and forget it tomorrow you have reached a wrong place. Please close this window now.
So you wanna learn SQL the real way? Smart. I am not going to write a 40 pager that will make you a expert in all statements in SQL. I am just going to help you in setting up something so that you can use the other tutorials on internet to learn the better way. Pause here for a moment and read my other post for setting up MySQL server on your box if you have not - MySQL Setup
Now that you have everything ready on your box we will create a database and a table to play with. After connecting to the server from the command prompt, that is from your MySQL client, follow the following steps.

Enter the commands as below to create a database called learnsql, a table called test and some queries to insert values and select them.

C:\Documents and Settings\prathap>mysql -uroot -p
Enter password: ****
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 8
Server version: 5.0.37-community-nt MySQL Community Edition (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> create database learnsql;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> use learnsql;
Database changed
mysql> create table test (Id Integer not null, Name varchar(255) not null);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)

mysql> desc test;
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Id | int(11) | NO | | | |
| Name | varchar(255) | NO | | | |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)


C:\Documents and Settings\prathap>mysql -uroot -p
Enter password: ****
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 8
Server version: 5.0.37-community-nt MySQL Community Edition (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> create database learnsql;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> use learnsql;
Database changed
mysql> create table test (Id Integer not null, Name varchar(255) not null);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)

mysql> desc test;
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Id | int(11) | NO | | | |
| Name | varchar(255) | NO | | | |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into test values (1, 'prathap');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.05 sec)

mysql> select * from test;
+----+---------+
| Id | Name |
+----+---------+
| 1 | prathap |
+----+---------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Now follow the tutorial at sql-tutorial Make sure that you try all the statements in the client.