SQL is an industry-standard language for describing operations that you want a database server to execute. Upon receiving the SQL instructions, the database server performs the requested operations, and if those operations return a result set, that result set is returned to the client that issued the instructions.

This chapter is the first of four designed to introduce you to using SQL with Advantage. This chapter begins with a look at the basic grammar of Advantage SQL, including keywords, references, operators, literals, SQL scalar functions, user defined functions, and parameters. It also describes the use of three query-related utilities: the SQL Utility, the Query Builder, and query logging.