What is the difference between sql and an sql server?

SQL is an abbreviation for Structured Query Language. SQL is a means to request data from a database. SQL is a standards based langage that has many versions approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). There are many versions of ANSI-SQL and most databases support specific versions of ANSI-SQL. SQL Server is a database management system that was originally created by Sybase. Microsoft bought the rights from Sybase to market their own version of SQL Server on the Microsoft Windows operating system. Sybase still has versions of SQL Server on other operating systems. When people refer to SQL Server, they typically mean "Microsoft SQL Server." Microsoft SQL Server is a database management system (DBMS) that utilizes SQL (or more specifically Transact-SQL, or T-SQL) as a means to extract data from it's database tables.