Oracle Database: SQL Fundamentals Course Outline

Overview

Learning the SQL language is one of the most basic tasks required for the use of a relational database. SQL proficiency is essential for business users, database developers, database administrators and any other database professional.

This course introduces the basics of the SQL language and the Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). One will become acquainted with the differences in the working environment between a traditional on-premise database installation and the Oracle database service cloud-computing platform.

This course also considers intermediate-level SQL topics such as writing database queries using the SQL-99 syntax and exploiting the power of built-in functions that extend the capabilities of SQL.

Since SQL is an industry standard language, many of the topics presented and many of the skills you will acquire will be applicable to other database platforms, such as Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, the open-source databases MySQL and PostgreSQL, and others.

This course takes a unique approach to SQL training in that it incorporates data modeling theory, relational database theory, graphical depictions of theoretical concepts and numerous examples of actual SQL syntax into one learning vehicle.

You will learn how to complete of an application schema definition by creating database objects such as relational views, sequences, synonyms, indexes and others to compliment the table definitions.

The crucial topic of data integrity and how this is protected using declarative constraints is covered.

With this course we will also leave the idyllic realm of the learning environment and begin to explore such practical real-world considerations as database object security and database performance.
This course content is applicable to versions 12c, 18c, and 19c.

Target Audience

• The target audience for this course is all Oracle professionals, both business and systems professionals.

Among the specific groups for whom this course will be helpful are:

• Business and non-IT professionals
• Application designers and database developers
• Business Intelligence (BI) analysts and consumers
• Database administrators
• Web server administrators

Certification

This course and the subsequent ones within this series consider subjects applicable to certification as an Oracle Database Certified SQL Expert. The topics considered are included within "Exam 1Z0-047: 

Objectives
The first portion of this course considers the logical models upon which a relational database is based and the various configurations and environments in which you may work with the Oracle database.

The next segment focuses on the actual SQL syntax for writing database queries. You will begin with the simplest of queries and then proceed onto moderately complex query scenarios.

Finally, this textbook covers the DDL, DML and transaction control portions of the SQL language that allow one to create, maintain and manipulate application database objects and application data.

This course also demonstrates how one can build intermediate-level and even advanced queries using the SQL-99 join syntax, along with other advanced query topics.

It also considers both ANSI/ISO and native Oracle SQL built-in functions and the tremendous power that functions offer to SQL operations. It is difficult for one to use SQL within a production environment without liberal use of the built-in functions.

Among many other tasks, the built-in functions allow one to move beyond the use of primitive date data types and values to include timestamps, time zones and to address other realistic date and time challenges.

Finally attention is given to how one completes an application schema by creating database objects to compliment table definitions. One cannot implement a production database application simply with table and column definitions but needs to create and manage views, indexes, constraints and other object types.