This document provides an overview of relational database management systems (RDBMS) and SQL. It discusses that in RDBMS, data is stored in tables with records as rows and fields as columns. It then explains that SQL is used to communicate with databases in a non-procedural way using commands like SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE. Finally, it gives examples of installing and using MySQL, an open source SQL implementation, along with common SQL commands like CREATE, INSERT, SELECT, and JOIN.