Hello,

First let me apologize for posting - everyone is wary of new posters and trolls.

I'm taking a class on SQL databases, and I'm struggling cause it's online so examples are lacking, and the ability to ask questions are limited.

I have this assignment:

The Oracle Server may be used to test and compile the SQL Queries developed for this assignment. Your instructor will provide you with login credentials to a University maintained Oracle server.

Imagine that you have been hired as a consultant to assist in streamlining the data processing of an international based organization that sells high-end electronics. The organization has various departments such as payroll, human resources, finance, marketing, sales, and operations. The sales department is the only department where employees are paid a commission in addition to their yearly salary and benefits. All other departments compensate their employees with a yearly salary and benefits only. Commission is paid by multiplying the employee’s commission rate by the total amount of product units sold. You have access to the following data sets:
Employee (EmpNumber, EmpFirstName, EmpLastName, CommissionRate, YrlySalary, DepartmentID, JobID)

Invoice (InvNumber, InvDate, EmpNumber, InvAmount)

InvoiceLine (InvLineNumber, InvNumber, ProductNumber, Quantity)

Product (ProductNumber, ProductDescription, ProductCost)

Department (DepartmentID, DepartmentDescription)

Job (JobID, JobDescription)

Design a query that will allow the finance department to determine the commissions paid to specific employees of the sales department for the month of December. Note: You will need to generate the tables described above (Employee, Invoice, InvoiceLine, Product, Department, and Job) in order to compare and validate your code. Validated query code must be part of your paper.
I know this is incredibly basic, but how do I generate the query code?

As an example, I've tried:

create table employee (
column 1 empnumber
column 2 emplastname
column 3 empfirstname );

just to try to generate a table so I know I have the syntax right.

But despite my variations, I keep getting errors thrown at me. I know this is pretty basic, but can anyone give me an example of a working query?

This is obviously homework help - I'm not looking for someone to do the assignment for me, I'm simply confused on the nature of how I should structure the query in the first place.

I found this link: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/...03.htm#autoId0 which is incredibly informative, but I really just need a working example and can expand from there...

This should be simple, I know I'm missing something.

For instance, if I try to generate the Job table listed in the assignment using this:

create table Job (
column1 jobid
column2 jobdescription
);

It returns this:
column2 jobdescription
*
ERROR at line 3:
ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis

Which makes even less sense to me...why didn't column1 show up, but line 3, which has the error, does?

Please help.

P.S. Sorry if wrong sub-forum.