SQL

Many people believe that SQL stands for Standard Query Language, but actually it doesn't - it is just plain SQL. However, it is a language, and is some kind of a standard used to perform queries on a database. It is also one of those few programming languages that have been around for many years and is not going away soon. I started working with C when people thought of it as new, but even then it was developed ten years prior.

SQL is used to query a database and can be thought of as a command-line language, that is, things that are typed in a computer console. Here is an example:

SELECT * FROM CRIMINALS WHERE NAME = "JONES" AND BIRTHYEAR  > "1965";

Here is another example:

SELECT  LAST, FIRST, ADDRES FROM CRIMINALS WHERE BIRTHYEAR > "1965";

If this reminds you of scenes from The Streets of San Francisco, or any other crime series of the seventies, you are absolutely right. What they were doing on these computer screens was looking up things in a database, and that was mostly the only...