Informix Guide to SQL: Tutorial Introduction

This manual shows how to use basic and advanced structured query language (SQL) to access and manipulate the data in your databases. It discusses the data manipulation language (DML) statements as well as triggers and stored procedure language (SPL) routines, which DML statements often use.

This manual is one of a series of manuals that discusses the Informix implementation of SQL. The Informix Guide to SQL: Syntax contains all the syntax descriptions for SQL and SPL. The Informix Guide to SQL: Reference provides reference information for aspects of SQL other than the language statements. The Informix Guide to Database Design and Implementation shows how to use SQL to implement and manage your databases.

This manual is written for the following users:

• Database users
• Database administrators
• Database-application programmers

This manual assumes that you have the following background:

• A working knowledge of your computer, your operating system, and the utilities that your operating system provides
• Some experience working with relational databases or exposure to database concepts
• Some experience with computer programming

If you have limited experience with relational databases, SQL, or your operating system, refer to the Getting Started manual for your database server for a list of supplementary titles.

This manual assumes that you are using one of the following database servers:

• Informix Enterprise Decision Server, Version 8.3
• Informix Dynamic Server 2000, Version 9.2

Informix products can support many languages, cultures, and code sets. All culture-specific information is brought together in a single environment, called a Global Language Support (GLS) locale.

This manual assumes that you use the U.S. 8859-1 English locale as the default locale. The default is en_us.8859-1 (ISO 8859-1) on UNIX platforms or en_us.1252 (Microsoft 1252) for Windows NT environments. This locale supports U.S. English format conventions for dates, times, and currency, and also supports the ISO 8859-1 or Microsoft 1252 code set, which includes the ASCII code set plus many 8-bit characters such as é, è, and ñ.

If you plan to use nondefault characters in your data or your SQL identifiers, or if you want to conform to the nondefault collation rules of character data, you need to specify the appropriate nondefault locale.

For instructions on how to specify a nondefault locale, additional syntax, and other considerations related to GLS locales, see the Informix Guide to GLS Functionality.

The DB-Access utility, which is provided with your Informix database server products, includes one or more of the following demonstration databases:

• The stores_demo database illustrates a relational schema with information about a fictitious wholesale sporting-goods distributor. Many examples in Informix manuals are based on the stores_demo database.
• The sales_demo database illustrates a dimensional schema for data-warehousing applications. For conceptual information about dimensional data modeling, see the Informix Guide to Database Design and Implementation.
• The superstores_demo database illustrates an object-relational schema. The superstores_demo database includes examples of extended data types, type and table inheritance, and user-defined routines.

For information about how to create and populate the demonstration databases, see the DB-Access User's Manual. For descriptions of the databases and their contents, see the Informix Guide to SQL: Reference.

The scripts that you use to install the demonstration databases reside in the $INFORMIXDIR/bin directory on UNIX and in the %INFORMIXDIR%\bin directory in Windows.