Data Manipulation Language, the SQL statements SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE, which act on the rows held in tables.
Also called Data Manipulation Language.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains DML in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Serverless
Compute tier for single Azure SQL databases that scales automatically, pauses when idle and charges by the second. It is offered in General Purpose and Hyperscale, not Business Critical, and reserved capacity does not apply.
- SELECT
A DML command in SQL used to retrieve rows from one table or several.
- INSERT
Adds fresh rows to a table. You list the target columns and supply a value for each; it is part of Data Manipulation Language (DML).
- CRUD
Shorthand for create, read, update and delete, the four basic things you do with data. Data-plane roles in Azure Cosmos DB, for instance, authorise those operations on items.
Related terms
- DQL
Data query language: SELECT and the other read-only parts of SQL. A Fabric warehouse handles DDL and DML alongside it, while an SQL analytics endpoint is limited to querying.
- Lock after qualification
Part of the optimized locking feature. Rows are first tested against a DML statement's filter using their newest committed version, without locking, and only rows that pass are locked. Read committed snapshot isolation must be on.
- Ownership chaining
If a procedure and the tables it reads have one owner, SQL Server checks permissions on the procedure alone, so granting EXECUTE suffices. This shortcut covers DML only, never dynamic SQL.
- UPDATE
A DML command that modifies values in rows already in a table; if no WHERE clause is given, every row is changed.
- Warehouse
Fabric item offering complete T-SQL support (DML, DDL, multi-table transactions) over Delta tables held in OneLake; lakehouse SQL analytics endpoints, by contrast, are read-only.