Databases and SQL

Selecting Data

A relational database is a way to store and manipulate information that is arranged as tables. Each table has columns (also known as fields) which describe the data, and rows (also known as records) which contain the data.

When we are using a spreadsheet, we put formulas into cells to calculate new values based on old ones. When we are using a database, we send commands (usually called queries) to a database manager: a program that manipulates the database for us. The database manager does whatever lookups and calculations the query specifies, returning the results in a tabular form that we can then use as a starting point for further queries.

Every database manager --- Oracle, IBM DB2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft Access, and SQLite --- stores data in a different way, so a database created with one cannot be used directly by another. However, every database manager can import and export data in a variety of formats, so it is possible to move information from one to another.

Queries are written in a language called SQL, which stands for "Structured Query Language". SQL provides hundreds of different ways to analyze and recombine data; we will only look at a handful, but that handful accounts for most of what scientists do.

The tables below show the database we will use in our examples:

Person: people who took readings.

ident	personal	family
dyer	William	Dyer
pb	Frank	Pabodie
lake	Anderson	Lake
roe	Valentina	Roerich
danforth	Frank	Danforth

Site: locations where readings were taken.

name	lat	long
DR-1	-49.85	-128.57
DR-3	-47.15	-126.72
MSK-4	-48.87	-123.4

Visited: when readings were taken at specific sites.

ident	site	dated
619	DR-1	1927-02-08
622	DR-1	1927-02-10
734	DR-3	1939-01-07
735	DR-3	1930-01-12
751	DR-3	1930-02-26
752	DR-3	-null-
837	MSK-4	1932-01-14
844	DR-1	1932-03-22

Survey: the actual readings.

taken	person	quant	reading
619	dyer	rad	9.82
619	dyer	sal	0.13
622	dyer	rad	7.8
622	dyer	sal	0.09
734	pb	rad	8.41
734	lake	sal	0.05
734	pb	temp	-21.5
735	pb	rad	7.22
735	-null-	sal	0.06
735	-null-	temp	-26.0
751	pb	rad	4.35
751	pb	temp	-18.5
751	lake	sal	0.1
752	lake	rad	2.19
752	lake	sal	0.09
752	lake	temp	-16.0
752	roe	sal	41.6
837	lake	rad	1.46
837	lake	sal	0.21
837	roe	sal	22.5
844	roe	rad	11.25

Notice that three entries --- one in the Visited table, and two in the Survey table --- don't contain any actual data, but instead have a special -null- entry: we'll return to these missing values later. For now, let's write an SQL query that displays scientists' names. We do this using the SQL command select, giving it the names of the columns we want and the table we want them from. Our query and its output look like this:

select family, personal from Person;

The semi-colon at the end of the query tells the database manager that the query is complete and ready to run. We have written our commands and column names in lower case, and the table name in Title Case, but we don't have to: as the example below shows, SQL is case insensitive.

SeLeCt FaMiLy, PeRsOnAl FrOm PeRsOn;

Whatever casing convention you choose, please be consistent: complex queries are hard enough to read without the extra cognitive load of random capitalization.

Going back to our query, it's important to understand that the rows and columns in a database table aren't actually stored in any particular order. They will always be displayed in some order, but we can control that in various ways. For example, we could swap the columns in the output by writing our query as:

select personal, family from Person;

or even repeat columns:

select ident, ident, ident from Person;

As a shortcut, we can select all of the columns in a table using *:

select * from Person;

SELECT personal, family FROM person;

select Personal, Family from PERSON;