General programmer information

Hi, all,

I’m brand new to web development (I’m designing my own blog site as a starting exercise) but not new to programming.

I’m hoping somebody here will point me to exhaustive lists of:

1) data values available WordPress mySQL tables (I want to know exactly what data are available, and in what forms); and

2) functions that perform WordPress-specific actions (I notice, for example, that there are get_sidebar() and get_header() functions; I’d like to see an exhaustive list of what functions are available.)

Surely these are listed in a command reference somewhere. I’ll take the necessary time to get to know html and php syntax, but I would prefer not to have to fumble around and pluck random functions from example code.

Thanks for your help.

Phil W.