11 lines
1.0 KiB
Markdown
11 lines
1.0 KiB
Markdown
## Introduction
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CARTO's SQL API allows you to interact with your tables and data inside CARTO, as if you were running SQL statements against a normal database. The database behind CARTO is PostgreSQL so if you need help with specific SQL statements or you want to learn more about it, visit the [official documentation](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/sql.html).
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There are two main situations in which you would want to use the SQL API:
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- You want to **insert, update** or **delete** data. For example, you would like to insert a new column with a latitude and longitude data.
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- You want to **select** data from public tables in order to use it on your website or in your app. For example, you need to find the 10 closest records to a particular location.
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Remember that in order to access, read or modify data in private tables, you will need to authenticate your requests. When a table is public, you can do non-authenticated queries that read data, but you cannot write or modify data without authentication. |