Businesses succeed when making informed judgments based on current technology and market trends, rivals, and partners. Extracting data from databases using the Structured Query Language (SQL, pronounced “sequel”) is one of the most common methods firms get business intelligence to assist them in making those decisions. 

According to Oracle Patches, SQL dates back to the early relational databases built in the 1970s by Dr. Edgar Codd, Donald Chamberlin, Raymond Boyce, and other IBM researchers. Data in one table in a relational database can be linked to data in any of the tables in the database’s thousands or even millions of entries. As a result, SQL makes searching for and retrieving data on business-related issues and presenting the findings in a report easier and quicker than ever.