Introduction to Data Management Systems

Data collection and analysis is an old practice dating back to the beginning of civilization. Records from ancient Egyptian papyrus suggest that pharaohs collected census information from villages, possibly to determine the number of soldiers that could be enlisted for war. Local authorities would collect the census and send it to the pharaoh’s court, where the data would be analyzed to determine the possible size of the army. The same process has been repeated thousands of times in the years since then. However, it was after the arrival of modern computers that the art of data analytics became a significant phenomenon that is changing people’s lives every day.

This book, as its name suggests, teaches you how to use Structured Query Language (SQL) for data analytics. SQL is the language that you will be focusing on in the rest of the book. But before diving into SQL, this chapter will provide an overview of data management...