Creating tables and modifying data

Last updated on 2024-03-26 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 25 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How can I create, modify, and delete tables and data?

Objectives

  • Write statements that create tables.
  • Write statements to insert, modify, and delete records.

So far we have only looked at how to get information out of a database, both because that is more frequent than adding information, and because most other operations only make sense once queries are understood. If we want to create and modify data, we need to know two other sets of commands.

The first pair are CREATE TABLE and DROP TABLE. While they are written as two words, they are actually single commands. The first one creates a new table; its arguments are the names and types of the table’s columns. For example, the following statement creates the table journals:

SQL 

CREATE TABLE journals(id text, ISSN-L text, ISSNs text, PublisherId text, Journal_Title text);

We can get rid of one of our tables using:

SQL 

DROP TABLE journals;

Be very careful when doing this: if you drop the wrong table, hope that the person maintaining the database has a backup, but it’s better not to have to rely on it.

We talked about data types earlier in Introduction to SQL: SQL Data Type Quick Reference.

When we create a table, we can specify several kinds of constraints on its columns. For example, a better definition for the journals table would be:

SQL 

CREATE TABLE "journals" (
	"id"            INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
	"ISSN-L"        TEXT,
	"ISSNs"	        TEXT,
	"PublisherId"   INTEGER,
	"Journal_Title"	TEXT,
	CONSTRAINT "PublisherId" FOREIGN KEY("PublisherId") REFERENCES "publishers"("id") 
);

Once again, exactly what constraints are available and what they’re called depends on which database manager we are using.

Once tables have been created, we can add, change, and remove records using our other set of commands, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE.

Here is an example of inserting rows into the journals table:

SQL 

INSERT INTO "journals"
VALUES (1,'2077-0472','2077-0472',2,'Agriculture');
INSERT INTO "journals"
VALUES (2,'2073-4395','2073-4395',2,'Agronomy');
INSERT INTO "journals"
VALUES (3,'2076-2616','2076-2616',2,'Animals');

We can also insert values into one table directly from another:

SQL 

CREATE TABLE "myjournals"(Journal_Title text, ISSNs text);
INSERT INTO "myjournals" 
SELECT Journal_Title, ISSNs 
FROM journals;

Modifying existing records is done using the UPDATE statement. To do this we tell the database which table we want to update, what we want to change the values to for any or all of the fields, and under what conditions we should update the values.

For example, if we made a typo when entering the ISSNs of the last INSERT statement above, we can correct it with an update:

SQL 

UPDATE journals
SET ISSN-L = 2076-2615, ISSNs = 2076-2615
WHERE id = 3;

Be careful to not forget the WHERE clause or the update statement will modify all of the records in the database.

Deleting records can be a bit trickier, because we have to ensure that the database remains internally consistent. If all we care about is a single table, we can use the DELETE command with a WHERE clause that matches the records we want to discard. We can remove the journal Animals from the journals table like this:

SQL 

DELETE FROM journals
WHERE Journal_Title = 'Animals';

But now the article Early Onset of Laying and Bumblefoot Favor Keel Bone Fractures from the table articles has no matching journal anymore. That’s never supposed to happen: Our queries assume there will be a row ISSNs in the table ‘journals’ matching every row ISSNsin the table articles.

Exercise

Write an SQL statement to add the journal “New Journal of Physics” (ISSNs & ISSNs: 1367-2630; publisher: “Institute of Physics (IOP)”) to the table journals. You need to add the publisher “IOP” to the table publishers as well.

SQL 

INSERT INTO "publishers"
VALUES (7,'Institute of Physics (IOP)');
INSERT INTO "journals"
VALUES (52,'1367-2630','1367-2630',7,'New Journal of Physics');

Backing Up with SQL

SQLite has several administrative commands that aren’t part of the SQL standard. One of them is .dump, which prints the SQL commands needed to re-create the database. Another is .read, which reads a file created by .dump and restores the database. A colleague of yours thinks that storing dump files (which are text) in version control is a good way to track and manage changes to the database. What are the pros and cons of this approach? (Hint: records aren’t stored in any particular order.)

Advantages

  • A version control system will be able to show differences between versions of the dump file; something it can’t do for binary files like databases
  • A VCS only saves changes between versions, rather than a complete copy of each version (save disk space)
  • The version control log will explain the reason for the changes in each version of the database

Disadvantages

  • Artificial differences between commits because records don’t have a fixed order

Adapted from the Software Carpentry Course “Databases and SQL”, Chapter 9. ‘Creating and Modifying Data’. https://swcarpentry.github.io/sql-novice-survey/09-create

Key Points

  • Use CREATE and DROP to create and delete tables.
  • Use INSERT to add data.
  • Use UPDATE to modify existing data.
  • Use DELETE to remove data.
  • It is simpler and safer to modify data when every record has a unique primary key.
  • Do not create dangling references by deleting records that other records refer to.