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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

DML

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˌdiː ɛm ˈɛl/abbreviationCommon term

In software engineering, DML means: Data manipulation language: the SQL statements that work with the data inside tables, mainly INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and often SELECT.

In Turkish: veri işleme dili, DML

How it is used

Some sources list SELECT separately as DQL (data query language). The distinction matters for permissions, auditing and change control: DML changes data, DDL changes structure. MERGE is also counted as DML.

Example sentences

  1. The audit trigger records every DML operation on the salaries table.

  2. Developers can run DML on staging but not DDL.

Common collocations

  • DML statement
  • DML operation
  • DML vs DDL
  • DML trigger
  • DDLData definition language: the SQL statements that create, change and remove database objects, such as CREATE, ALTER and DROP.
  • INSERT statementThe SQL statement that adds one or more new rows to a table, using INSERT INTO followed by the column names and their values.
  • UPDATE statementThe SQL statement that changes values in rows that already exist, usually limited by a WHERE clause so that only the right rows are changed.
  • DELETE statementThe SQL statement that removes rows from a table. With a WHERE clause it removes only matching rows; without one it removes every row.
  • upsertTo insert a row if it does not exist yet, or update it if it already does, in a single operation. The word combines 'update' and 'insert'.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Databases and Persistence

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