Categories of SQL Statements

SQL statements are traditionally divided into the following logical categories:

Data definition statements

These data definition language (DDL) statements can declare, rename, modify, or destroy objects in the local database.

Data manipulation statements

These data manipulation language (DML) statements can retrieve, insert, delete, or modify data values.

Cursor manipulation statements

These statements can declare, open, and close cursors, which are data structures for operations on multiple rows of data.

Dynamic management statements

These statements support memory management and allow users to specify at runtime the details of DML operations.

Data access statements

These statements specify discretionary access privileges and support concurrent access to the database by multiple users.

Data integrity statements

These implement transaction logging and support the referential integrity of the database.

Optimization statements

These can be used to improve the performance of operations on the database.

Routine definition statements

These can declare, define, modify, execute, or destroy user-defined routines that the database stores.

Client/server connection statements

These can open or close a connection between a database and a client application.

Auxiliary statements

These can provide information about the database. (This is also a residual category for statements that are not closely related to the other statement categories.)

Optical subsystem statements

These statements are separately documented in .