In order to become familiar with SQL and SQL-based platforms, one have to gain basic knowledge about some of the basic concepts. Here I will list what seems to be to be important to know before jumping to learn any SQL-based platform. These concepts helps you to have a big picture about what you are about to learn and why you need to use them. Of course, I might change this list over the time as I myself gain more and more experienced in teaching SQL. For some the following concepts I have written a small description and for others I don't; anyway, this is to provide a checklist for your start point, not to provide you with extensive definitions. I'm sure you can find many comprehensive definitions using search engines and generative AI tools.
Important basic have-to-knows before learning SQL:
What are Database?
What is a Relational Database?
What is SQL (Structured Query Language)?
What are the most popular SQL-Based Databases?
MySQL:Fast and scalable, Commercial Open Source.
Oracle: Commercial, Enterprise-Scale.
MariaDB: Open Source.
PostgreSQL: Opensource.
Some other smaller projects like: SQLite, HSQL, ...
What does CRUD (Create, Read/Select, Update, Delete) mean?
The four basic actions that one can do using databases are:
Creating/Inserting Data
Read/Select some Data
Update Data
Delete Data
In a Relational Database, what does a Database represent?
It contains one or more tables.
In a Relational Database, what does a Relation/Tuple represent?
It contains tuples and attributes.
In a Relational Database, what does a Tuple/Row represent?
a set of fields which generally represent an "Object", like a person or a music track
In a Relational Database, what does an Attribute/Column/Field represent?
One pf the possible many elements of data corresponding to the object represented by the row
What is a Database Schema?
What is the SQL Architecture? How SQL commands are run on a SQL Server (regardless of what kind of SQL Client and/or Server you are using)?