ANSWER :

1. The First Step is to become familiar with the basics of the SQL language :-
   

   SQL is very powerful because it consists of only 4 statements, 
   sometimes referred to as CRUD :-
   1) Create - INSERT - to store new data
   2) Read   - SELECT - to retrieve data 
   3) Update - UPDATE - to change or modify data.
   4) Delete - DELETE - delete or remove data
   
   For example, you could create a table of STUDENTS data, then find all the students 
   from Richmond by saying :-
      SELECT first_name, UPPER(last_name) FROM students WHERE address_town = 'Richmond' 
      ORDER BY last_name;
   This would give you, for example :-
      Barry WILLIAMS
   
   A CRUD matrix is a table showing which parts of an application contain an
   SQL statement, which is a CRUD operation which affects which parts of a database.
   
   

2. The Second Step is to check out some suggested online Tutorials, and if you have any good or bad experiences with them, please let us know :-
   1. Getting Started, published by DBA Support.
   2. MySQL Tutorial from University of Nebraska-Lincoln
      It focusses on MySQL, which is a popular free version of SQL, but the material presented is still very general.
   3. MySQL Tutorial from WebMonkey which also includes a Tutorial on Your First Database Application
   4. SQL Course from Internet.Com.
      This has an SQL Interpreter so you can practice what you learn. It also has some useful links.
   5. SQL Pro from Development Exchange
      This Site hundreds of Tutorials and fragments of SQL Server Code.
   6. SQL Quick Reference Site
      Texis WebScript from Thunderstone - has a Search facility.
   7. SQL Reference and Example Site
      A well organised Site from Lawrence Truett that uses a movie database in its examples.
   8. SQL Tutorial from Elliott Spencer which explains the basics.
   9. SQL Tutorial from James Hoffman.
      This is an excellent Tutorial which includes some examples from the real world.
      It also includes a number of very useful links and the author says his course is widely used in database classes.
   10. SQL Tutorial from Vanderbilt University.
       Presented as a series of 19 Slides, which contain print-screen shots showing Tables in Microsoft Access.
       Some of these are large files,(like 144K) and take a long time to download.
       This Tutorial is a step-by-step course on how to use Access.
       Access is an excellent product to learn SQL but it is vendor-specific
       and it lacks many features of other products, such as Oracle and IBM's DB2.
   11. SQL Zone - a good place to start for Microsoft SQL Server,
       which also includes a UML Zone.
   
   
   
3. The Third Step is to become familiar with some SQL Discussion Groups :-
   • Go to Deja.com
     Check out 'comp.databases',
     where you will find a number of general Groups, (like comp.databases.theory),
     and vendor specific ones, (like comp.databases.ibm-db2, and comp.databases.oracle.server, etc).
     Search for SQL and you will get all manner of useful responses.
     On Deja, you can also check out 'alt.comp.databases'
   • Yahoo has an SQL Club.