Creating Databases and Tables

Imagine you are tasked with building an online store to sell products globally. To manage your inventory, track orders, and store customer information, you need a structured system to organize all this data. Specifically, when your store becomes popular and attracts many customers, leading to a huge amount of data that needs to be managed. This is where creating databases and tables becomes important.

Let's explore how to create databases and tables in SQL, which are foundational steps in developing any database-driven application. We'll learn how to:

• Use the CREATE DATABASE statement to create a new database.

• Utilize the CREATE TABLE statement to define new tables.

• Define columns with appropriate data types.

• Use the SHOW and DESCRIBE commands to inspect databases and tables.

Create a database with CREATE DATABASE

Before storing any data, we need a container to hold our tables and other database objects. This container is basically our database. In SQL, we can create a new database using the CREATE DATABASE statement. The syntax is simple, as shown below.

The CREATE DATABASE statement requires the name of our database. In the SQL statement above, it is the DatabaseName. It should be unique within our database server. For example, if we have to create a database for an online store, we can name it OnlineStore as follows:

The command above initializes a new database where we can begin creating tables for products, customers, orders, and more.

Once we have a database, the next question is how to use it for further actions, such as displaying, updating, or managing the data stored in it. ...