Transact – SQL Language

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 Objective

To be able to understand Transact SQL, the various data types,

operators and functions supported by it and how to execute
queries..

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 Scope

 Transact – SQL Overview

 Referring to objects
 SQL’s basic objects
 Data types
 Predicates
 Functions
 Scalar Operator
 Global Variables

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 Transact – SQL Overview

 Transact-SQL is central to the use of Microsoft SQL Server.

 All applications that communicate with SQL Server do so

by sending Transact-SQL statements to the server,
regardless of an application's user interface.

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 Referring to Objects

 [
    server_name. [database_name]. [owner_name].
    | database_name. [owner_name].
    | owner_name.
    ]
]
object_name
 where,
 server_name specifies a linked server name or remote
server name.
 database_name specifies the name of a Microsoft SQL
Server database when the object resides in a SQL
Server database. It specifies an OLE DB catalog when
the object is in a linked server.

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 Referring to Objects

 owner_name specifies the user that owns the

object if the object is in a SQL Server database. It
specifies an OLE DB schema name when the object
is in a linked server.
 Object_name refers to the name of the object.
The valid formats of object names are:
– server.database.owner.object
– server.database..object
– server..owner.object
– server...object
– database.owner.object
– database..object
– owner.object
– object
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 SQL’s Basic Objects

Transact – SQL has the same basic feature as other

common programming languages.

 Constants or literal values

 Delimiters
 Identifiers
 Reserved keyword.

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 Constants or literal values

 A literal value is an alphanumerical, hexadecimal , or numeric

constant.

 A string constant contains one or more characters of the SQL

Server character set enclosed in two single straight quotation
marks or double straight quotation marks.

 Hexadecimal constant begins with the character “0x”.

Examples:
‘sqlserver2005’ – String constant
0x53678CDF – Hexadecimal constant
130 – Numeric constant

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 Delimiters or Comments

 There are different ways to specify a comment in a Transact –

SQL statement.

 The pair of character /* and */ mark the enclosed text as a

comment.

 The character – (two hyphens ) indicate that the remainder of the

current line is a comment.

Examples:
/* Employee Table */
-- Inserting the records

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 Identifiers

 An identifier refers to the names of objects such as tables, views, columns,

databases, and indices.

 The first character can be a letter from the Unicode character set. This includes the
standard US English a-z and A-Z characters as well as foreign letters

 Identifiers can be up to 128 characters long, except for the names of local
temporary tables, which can be upto 116 characters long.

 Identifiers cannot be a SQL Server reserved word in either upper or lower case.

 Identifiers cannot contain embedded spaces or special characters other than those
specified above.

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 Reserved Keywords

 The reserved words are reserved for the use of SQL Server
and should not be used for the names of objects in a
database.

 The SQL Server Books Online contains an extensive list of

reserved words.

 The Query Analyzer can be used to check whether a

particular word is a keyword.

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 Data Types

 Data types define the types of data contained by data objects, such as
columns, variables, and parameters.

 The data type is the first characteristic that is defined for the column of a
table.

 The data type of a column controls the type of information that can be
stored within the column

 Data types can be categorized into:

 Numeric data types

 String data types
 Data types for date and time
 Derived data types
 Miscellaneous data types
 User-defined data types

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 Numeric Data Types

Numeric data types are used to represent numbers. Transact–SQL

uses the following numeric data types.
 Int – Represents integer values, which can be stored in 4 bytes.
 Smallint - Represents integer values, which can be stored in 2 bytes.
 Tinyint - Represents non-negative integer values, which can be stored in 1 byte.
 BigInt - Represents integer values, which can be stored in 8 bytes.
 Money - Represents monetary values

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 String Data Types

There are three types of string data types : character, binary and bit
string.
Character string data types are:

 Char [n]
 Text [n]
 Ntext [n]

 Binary string data types are:

 Binary [n]
 Image [n]

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 New Data types in SQL 2005

SQL Server 2005 introduces three new data types concerning LOB’s
(Large Objects)
The data types are:

 VARCHAR(MAX)
 NVARCHAR(MAX)
 VARBINARY(MAX)

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 Date and/or Time data types

SQL Server 2005 supports the following date and time data types.

The data types are:

 DATETIME
 SMALLDATETIME

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 Derived data types

SQL Server 2005 supports two data types that can be derived from
simple data types.
The data types are:

 TIMESTAMP
 SYSNAME

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 Miscellaneous data types

SQL Server 2005 supports several data types that do not belong to
any of the data type groups described previously.
The are as follows:

 CURSOR
 UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
 SQL_VARIANT
 TABLE
 XML

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 User-Defined data types

 A user can define his own datatype, which can then be used as a datatype
for a storage structure such as a table column.

 A user-defined datatype is defined by the user for a specific database.

 It is defined in terms of system-supplied datatypes.

 Each user-defined datatype is added as a row in the system table called

systypes.

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 Predicates

 A Predicates defines a logical condition being applied to rows ina

table. The common logical conditions with two values (true, false)
are extended in the SQL language by the third value (unknown).

The Transact - SQL language supports the following

predicates.

 All Relational operator.

 BETWEEN operator
 IN operator
 LIKE operator
 NULL operator
 ALL and ANY operator
 EXISTS function

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 FUNCTIONS

 Functions take zero, one, or more input values and return a scalar
value or a tabular set of values.

 The Transact-SQL programming language provides following

functions:

 Aggregate functions
 Scalar functions.

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 Aggregate Functions

 Aggregate functions are applied to a group of data values from

a column.
 Aggregate function always return a single value.

The Transact – SQL supports following functions

AVG,MAX,MIN,SUM,COUNT,COUNT_BIG

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 Scalar Functions

 Scalar functions operates on a single value or list of values.

Scalar functions can be categorized as follows:

 Numeric Functions
 Date Functions
 String Functions
 Text/Image functions
 System functions

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 Numeric Functions

 Numeric functions with in Transact-SQL language are

mathematical functions for modifying numeric values.

Numeric functions are as follows:

ABS, ACOS, ASIN, ATAN, COS, COT, DEGREES, EXP, FLOOR,LOG,

RAND,ROUND,SIGN,SIN,SQRT,SQUARE,TAN

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 Date Functions

 Date functions calculate the respective date or time portion of

an expression or return the value from a time interval.

Date functions are as follows:

GETDATE,DATEPART,DATENAME,DATEDIFF,DATEADD

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 String Functions

 String functions are used for manipulating data values in a

column, usually of a string data type.

String functions are as follows:

ASCII,CAST,CHAR,CONVERT,CHARINDEX,DIFFERENCE,LOWER,LT
RIM,NEWID,REPLACE,REVERSE,RIGHT,RTRIM,SOUNDEX,SPACE,S
TR,STUFF,SUBSTRING,UPPER

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 System Functions

 System functions are designed for use with columns of the

text/image data types.

System functions are as follows:

COALESCE,COL_LENGTH,Col_NAME,DB_ID,HOST_ID,HOST_NAME
,INDEX_COL,ISNULL,OBJECT_ID,SUSER_SID,SUSER_SNAME,USE
R_NAME,USER,SYSTEM_USER,CURRENT_USER

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 Text/Image Functions

 Text/Image functions provide extensive information about

database objects.

Text/Image functions are as follows:

PATINDEX,TEXTPTR,TEXTVALID

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 Scalar Operators

 Scalar Operator are used for operations with scalar values.

 There are unary and binary arithmetic operator.
 Unary operators are + and –
 Binary operators are +,-,*,/ and %
 The bitwise operators for manipulating bit strings.

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 Global Variables

 Global Variables are special system variables that can be used

as if they were scalar constants.

SQL supports following global variables.

@@CONNECTIONS,@@CPU_BUSY,@@IDLE,@@VERSION,@@
PROCID,@@SPID,@@TOTAL_READ

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