best place to relearn SQL

[Mirinjawbro]

hello

looking at getting back into SQL and apart from the normal udemy and places like that is anyone aware of any new websites in the last maybe 3 years that are good for coding?

thanks

[toasty]

YouTube will give you plenty. There are so many courses. Just pick one where you understand the presenter.

[lizardbrain]

perhaps chat got etc is a useful learning partner, good for asking about bits you don't understand and giving examples

[spikeyhead]

Have a look at what MIT has to offer

[RTaylor2208]

If looking at standard ANSI SQL then here is ok as a starting point: https://www.w3schools.com/sql/

If your looking for much more advanced SQL and in a specific implementation like SQL Server then the Itzik Ben Gan books are very hard to beat:

https://itziktsql.com/

Again if talking specifically about SQL server this forum is a great reference point: https://www.sqlservercentral.com/ Loads of very useful articles and solutions in the forum itself, I don't contribute much on there these days as I have moved on from being a DBA to a Data Engineer and most recently a DevOps engineer but some great content on there in general.

ANSI SQL may be a standard, but each technology I have worked on has different syntax for things outside the ANSI standard, so if you have a particular technology in in mind such as MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Google Big Query etc then focusing on learning the SQL variations implemented in those technologies may be more efficient.

Edited by RTaylor2208 on Monday 17th June 14:30

Edited by RTaylor2208 on Monday 17th June 14:37

[sugerbear]

I would also have a look at R and SQLDF (basically sqlite).

I learnt SQL on a mainframe (and have been successfully using when I transitioned to a business unit ever since). Learning R had added a whole new string to my skillset. (and Excel with macros). On the whole I use excel the most, R a lot and SQL not very often.

Programming wise I think most organisations are moving to NoSQL data storage but there is always room for a good SQL programmer.

[ATG]

An awful lot of no-sql tech ends up with some bd slapping a sql api on top. SQL is alive and kicking and wreaking havoc.

[bmwmike]

ATG said:

An awful lot of no-sql tech ends up with some bd slapping a sql api on top. SQL is alive and kicking and wreaking havoc.

Ha, yes - seen that first hand, months if not years of development effort wasted putting a SQL api in front of mongodb, and eventually binning the lot off for an RDBMS. A properly designed & normalised relational database is hard to beat for many normal use cases, SQL is not going anywhere, doubt it'll leave the OWASP top 10 any time soon either..

[Lardydah]

As with all things programming/tech related I'd suggest trying to find a personal project or something that interests you. Something to get stuck into rather than trying to follow a boring shopping cart/hello world examples. Ie if you're into cooking why not start trying to make a recipe database, or if sporty something to store golf rounds, or maybe even your household spending/saving.

Plenty of stuff online to follow and as per other posters stick to ANSI but understand that each RDBMS will do things slightly differently / have different features. SQL can be a total rabbit hole after scratching the surface and entire well-paid careers have been made out of being an expert in SQL Server or Oracle etc.

Agreed with all of the other comments that SQL/relational databases aren't going anywhere. NoSQL/document DBs are definitely flavour of the month at the moment and are incredibly well suited and much better than relational DBs in many scenarios (mega scale applications where total consistency isn't always paramount, where a developer needs somewhere to dump schema-less data, inherently unstructured data).

But there are still a ton of line of business applications, consumer websites, business intelligence stacks out there where SQL is the bedrock.

[eliot]

Lardydah said:

As with all things programming/tech related I'd suggest trying to find a personal project or something that interests you. Something to get stuck into rather than trying to follow a boring shopping cart/hello world examples. Ie if you're into cooking why not start trying to make a recipe database, or if sporty something to store golf rounds, or maybe even your household spending/saving.

yes agreed - it forces you to stick at it and achieve the outcome.

[Mirinjawbro]

thanks all for the help

yes i agree. a project myself. rather than say hello box.

[Mr Penguin]

You can set up an RDS on AWS free tier which is a bit easier than setting something up on a PC or Pi. Then just practice.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

Hands up anyone who has been working on a live database, executed a DELETE statement and then felt sick as you realised you hadn't highlighted the WHERE part of the statement when you clicked execute?

Then the five minutes of pure panic as you try and work out how to get the data back and cover your tracks so nobody realises.