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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

Query

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈkwɪri/nounCore term

In software engineering, query means: A request sent to a database to read or change data, usually written in SQL. As a verb, to query means to ask a database for data.

In Turkish: sorgu

How it is used

One of the most frequent words in the field. You write, run, execute, optimize and tune queries; a query returns rows, times out or takes too long. 'Query' is also a verb: 'query the orders table'. In everyday English, 'query' can simply mean a question from a customer.

Example sentences

  1. This query takes eight seconds; can you check whether it uses an index?

  2. The dashboard queries the database every thirty seconds.

Common collocations

  • run a query
  • write a query
  • slow query
  • query results
  • query the database
  • SQLStructured Query Language: the standard language used to create tables and to read, add, change and delete data in relational databases.
  • SELECT statementThe SQL statement that reads data from one or more tables and returns the matching rows without changing anything in the database.
  • execution planThe step-by-step strategy the database chooses to run a query, showing which indexes it uses, how tables are joined and how many rows it expects.
  • subqueryA query written inside another query, in brackets, whose result is used by the outer query, for example as a list of values to filter by.
  • slow queryA query that takes longer than an agreed limit to finish, slowing down the application and using up database resources.

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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