FAQ: Languages for Web Development - What is SQL?

This community-built FAQ covers the “What is SQL?” exercise from the lesson “Languages for Web Development”.

Paths and Courses
This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

Code Foundations

FAQs on the exercise What is SQL?

Join the Discussion. Help a fellow learner on their journey.

Ask or answer a question about this exercise by clicking reply (reply) below!

Agree with a comment or answer? Like (like) to up-vote the contribution!

Need broader help or resources? Head here.

Looking for motivation to keep learning? Join our wider discussions.

Learn more about how to use this guide.

Found a bug? Report it!

Have a question about your account or billing? Reach out to our customer support team!

None of the above? Find out where to ask other questions here!

Hi this might be a stupid question, but I was wondering why now the SQL code is all written in capital letters?
Why this: SELECT * FROM users;
And not this: select * from users;

I tried both in the online text editor and they both work but will this also work in the real world?

1 Like

That is just a personal preference, it will not affect the result, but i suggest to let your IDE make keywords stand out, via syntax highlighting.

What is even suppose to happen? I copy and paste that query and nothing happens… I go to get unstuck and replace with their solution and I sill don’t see anything highlighted when I hit run. I’ve tried on different computers and it is driving me INSANE.

you need to press the run button

Hi!

Here’s a series of questions I would have liked answered in this exercise so as to understand how SQL is articulated better:

We start on default page users.sqlite that is empty. The query we make magically fetches data and displays it in the app display and returns all elements from the database.

Questions 1 : where is the app built? I don’t see html/CSS/JS content in the directory
Question 2 : what does users refer to in the query? If it refers to the page we’re working on (users.sqlite), how can it result in anything since it is seemingly empty before our query? How is the database targeted in this syntax?
Question 3 : If tmp.txt is the content of the database, then what is the role of the db.sqlite (which I assume is the “engine” of the database)

I’m curious about those being valid questions and whether they should be addressed in the intro to SQL exercise. After all, we were shown clearly how the communication happens between html and css files, how JS is “self contained” in an html page and affects said page. Here it feels like everything is disconnected in SQL.

1 Like

hey there, I was wondering if sql is for storing and managing data in a sturctured query, doesn’t this makes it backend programing language. This might be dummy question but I am in Front-End develpment course and I was kinda congused. But nevermind read everything :sob: :sob: wait I just got it the topic of syllabus is Overview of Web Development…

It is a simulator of a console, like a notebook but runing online, with your credentials.

Quick question, the information generated by SQL… is it the information stored on a web site when a person inputting their personal info into a form or login, you know like login into Google for the first time but the second time base on what is being typed in it remembers similar context ?

on page 12 Codecademy refers to Alexandra’s app but this is a website correct?