Which came first, the table or the data? The data, of course, which is why you need the table in the first place. But seriously, you can't have a database without one or more tables. Furthermore, tables are not much use if you do not have indexes for them. After that, views, stored procedures, triggers, and the like prove quite valuable.

This section covers three essential SQL statements: CREATE, ALTER, and DROP. You use CREATE to create tables and data dictionary objects, ALTER to modify the structure of an existing table, and DROP to destroy objects. Each of these statements is covered in the following sections.