Creating a schema using SQL

Using a SQL script to create your schema is a recommended best practice. This makes it easier to adjust the schema definitions and recreate the schema quickly, if needed.

The script for creating a schema is a text file that contains all the SQL commands to create your schema. Use the comment tags /* and */ to document your script.

Enclose all object names (schema, table, and column) in double quotes, and any column values in single quotes. Use double quotes for object names that are also reserved words in SQL, or that contain special characters. Special characters are all characters other than letters, numbers, or the underscore (_). If you get the error message "Error parsing SQL. Check SQL input.", check your script for object names without double quotes.

If you are working in a schema other than the default schema, object names must be fully qualified: "<schema_name>"."<object_name>".

If your schema includes constraints to define relationships between tables, such as primary key and foreign key definitions, or the RELATIONSHIP syntax, we recommend that you first create all the tables, and then add the relationships between the tables using the ADD CONSTRAINT syntax. This approach makes it easier to troubleshoot the script and make subsequent changes.

  1. Open a new file in a text editor.

  2. Type in the command to create the database, if it does not already exist:

     CREATE database <db_name>;

  3. Type in the command to specify the database to use:

     USE database <db_name>;

  4. Type in the command to create the schema, if you don’t want to use the default schema:

  5. Type in each of the CREATE TABLE statements, with its column definitions, primary key constraints, and sharding specification (if any).

  6. At the end of your script, optionally type in the ALTER TABLE statements to add foreign keys to use in joining the tables.

  7. Save the file.

  8. Run the script using one of these methods:

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