Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Reviewing the Defaults
So let’s look one last time at how the defaults work at each level of the naming hierarchy from right to left:
❑ Object Name: There isn’t a default — you must supply an object name.
❑ Ownership: You can leave this off, in which case it will resolve first using the current user’s
name, and then, if the object name in question doesn’t exist with the current user as owner, then
it will try the dbo as the owner.
❑ Database Name: This can also be left off unless you are providing a Server Name — in which
case you must provide the Database Name for SQL Servers (other server types vary depending
on the specific kind of server).
❑ Server Name: You can provide the name of a linked server here, but most of the time you’ll just
leave this off, which will cause SQL Server to default to the server you are logged into.
If you want to skip the schema name, but still provide information regarding the database or server, then
you must still provide the extra “.” for the position where the owner would be. For example, if we are logged
in using the AdventureWorks2008 database on our local server, but want to refer to the Sales.Customer
table in the AdventureWorks2008 database on a linked server called MyOtherServer, then we could
refer to that table by using MyOtherServer.AdventureWorks2008..Customer. Since we didn’t provide
a specific schema name, it will assume that either the default schema for the user ID that is used to
log on to the linked server or the dbo (in that order) is the schema of the object you want (in this case,
Customer). Since the Customer table is not part of the dbo schema, the user would need to have a default
schema of Sales or they would get an error that the object was not found. In general, I recommend explicitly
naming the schema of the object you want to reference.
The CREATE Statement
In the Bible, God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light! Unfortunately, creating things isn’t quite
as simple for us mere mortals. We need to provide a well-defined syntax in order to create the objects in
our database. To do that, we make use of the CREATE statement.
Let’s look at the full structure of a CREATE statement, starting with the utmost in generality. You’ll find
that all the CREATE statements start out the same, and then get into the specifics. The first part of the CREATE
statement will always look like:
CREATE
This will be followed by the details that vary by the nature of the object that you’re creating.
CREATE DATABASE
For this part of things, we’ll need to create a database called Accounting that we will also use when we
start to create tables. The most basic syntax for the CREATE DATABASE statement looks like this:
CREATE DATABASE
Chapter 5: Creating and Altering Tables
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