SQL is a powerful and expressive language for doing mass manipulations of tabular data, but the basics can be grasped quickly. SQL is executed as individual queries which either define or manipulate data in the database. SQL dialects vary somewhat between different relational database products, but most of them support ANSI/ISO-standard SQL for core operations. While we'll be using PostgreSQL in this chapter, most of the SQL statements we write will be portable to different databases.
To follow this section, connect to an empty database on your PostgreSQL database server, either using the psql command-line tool, the pgAdmin 4 graphical tool, or another database client software of your choosing.
