Perhaps nobody here will know this answer as I am told this database is an expensive and rarely used one. However, do any of you know the SQL (Structured Queried Language) database? If so, do you know whether data entered into it can be merged to another database, such as the more commonly used Excel or Access databases?

Apologies to those, like me, who know nothing about this question!

SQL is a language (as its name implies) for writing structured queries. It is a standard for writing queries for what are usually called relational databases. There are databases that have SQL as part of their name: e.g., MySQL is a popular open-source relational database, SQL Server is a commercial database program from Microsoft, etc.

Most serious databases (whether free or costly support SQL to make queries of the data stored in them.

As for the second question. Data stored in relational databases can usually be moved between database servers (or programs). For example, data stored in an Oracle database can be moved to MySQL or PostgreSQL or what have you. You may have to hire a consultant to move the data. You can contact me offline (by PM) and I can give you some suggestions.

Access uses SQL, but AFAIK Excel does not. You could dump the data from a relational database to some text format and read it into an Excel spreadsheet, but you lose a lot of the functionality of a relational database and SQL.

Thanks so much, z! I will contact you by PM.

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the more commonly used Excel or Access databases

Access is a database program, but Excel is not; it's a spreadsheet. You could probably export the database tables to Excel, but not the underlying relational database functionality.

Out of interest, how do you pronounce SQL? Where I work, about half of those who use it pronounce it as "sequel", like an acronym; the other half call it "ess cue ell", as an initialism.

Out of interest, how do you pronounce SQL?

I worked at Oracle for a number of years, and they all pretty much pronounced it "sequel". (The San Carlos airport next to Oracle's HQ has the identification SQL.) But there is variation as you suggest. Many pronounce it as an initialism.

Yes, they are pronouncing it "Sequel" here too. I had to ask how to spell it and then look up what it meant.

In academic places where I've been, we've stored the data in Excel, and then used SPSS to analyze the data. So I don't even understand why SQL is an advantage in that way of doing things. However, at my work, we use SAS, and not SPSS. So perhaps that's why we have SQL? I have asked but have gotten conflicting answers.

In academic places where I've been, we've stored the data in Excel, and then used SPSS to analyze the data. So I don't even understand why SQL is an advantage in that way of doing things.

Because writing queries in SQL is a very powerful way of accessing your data. In a SQL query you can ask to retrieve all employee records that were created between two certain dates and where the employees SSN starts with 5. That sort of thing. It is hard to imagine any of the big web businesses like Amazon or eBay without relational databases storing the data and SQL being used to extract or create the data. There is a reason why Oracle is the second largest software company in the world, and that is directly related to SQL. By the way, Oracle did not invent the language; IBM invented SQL, and it is now an industry standard. No database program worth selling would be conceivable without SQL.

Well, from a research point of view, most statisticians and researchers haven't used SQL, so it makes it awkward for us to analyze SQL data. We are told to learn it will take significant training. The IT people, who know SQL and who designed our surveys through SQL, don't know statistics, while our statisticians (outside consultants) don't know IT and SQL. One can see the conundrum...

And, for the record, SPSS or SAS both allow for all sorts of relational data analysis.

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while our statisticians (outside consultants) don't know IT and SQL.

Certainly our statisticians all know SQL - at least, enough to be able to construct extremely complicated queries to inform their research. SQL isn't hard to pick up. It's possible to start writing queries after an hour or so that will provide fairly sophisticated analysis.

It seems to me that you could use both. You could receive data sets from a relational database using SQL queries, and then analyze the data sets using SPSS or something similar.

Again, SQL is not the name of any database program that I am aware of. It is the name of a computer language used to extract and create data in almost any relational database program you would care to use. Not many people realize that when you create a report in MS Access that SQL is being generated and used behind the GUI wizards. Open Help in MS Access and search on SQL. You'll find a whole bunch of information on it.