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Best app to learn SQL on

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Target:
Any recommendations? 

I'm wanting to teach myself some SQL and want to know a good place to start.  I have a couple of books, but I'm a bit confused about which software package to work with (I tried MySQL and it installed a million things that I didn't know what to do with)

Shades:
You will need a database server and likely a separate client for that particular database.

You can get and use Express editions from Microsoft (SQL Server) and Oracle. Both are free, but limited in the amount of data they can store at a given time. Last time I checked, for Oracle XE it was 10 GByte (not counting the system tables) and 12 GByte for SQL Server Express. These also offer a client (each an extra 1 GByte to download), which help you out with the creation of SQL queries and even show you where your queries can be optimized, as these allow you to investigate any query at a low level. That is, of course, if such things interest you.

MySQL (or MariaDB, the fork of MySQL by the creator of MySQL) is good to learn, as you can find a lot of examples on the internet and the phpMyAdmin web-based client is handy for managing such a database.
PostgeSQL is also freely available (open source) and very powerful. You can get the pgAdmin web-based manager to manage and study SQL.

Remember though, as each of the databases I mention here have their own dialect of SQL, queries might not be applicable on another type of DB server.

SQL Server and Oracle are used a lot in enterprises, while MySQL/MariaDB is used a lot for web pages. So, depending on where you think you will end up using your SQL skills, choose accordingly.

However, if I'm honest, the Microsoft DB server and client combo is most likely the easiest way for you to learn SQL with. The editor for queries is based on the one included in the Visual Code IDE and comes with a lot of help. Setting it up is also rather easy, especially when the client and server are installed on the same machine.

Target:
The current version of SQL server isn't compatible with my OS (W7) so I guess thats out...

I understood that the various implementations all had distinct dialects so I guess I was looking for something reasonably generic to get me started

Ath:
I understood that the various implementations all had distinct dialects so I guess I was looking for something reasonably generic to get me started
-Target (November 05, 2019, 12:06 AM)
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Well, if you need a good standards-compliant SQL, then PostgreSQL is a good candidate. It's very well documented, supported, and as much Open Source as it gets. Find it here: PostgreSQL.org
I'm not too thrilled with the currently provided tools to manage it, though, they're pretty darn slow, last time I used that (been a while), but it gets the job done.

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