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Ask HN: Best SQL Courses?
Hey HN!
With the recent influx of SQL posts and lots of jobs in my field (tech sales, customer success, product, analyst) listing SQL experience as a bonus or even preferred now, I was wondering if anyone had a go to beginner SQL course?
I have basics programming skills to the extent of someone who has taken CS classes in HS and is familiar with GitHub,terminals,etc, if that helps.
- Tomte 4y agoI liked Mastery with SQL: https://www.masterywithsql.com/ https://www.masterywithsql.com/
- zbhoy 4y agoThis looks great and affordable! Thank you!
- CRConrad 4y agoW3Schools Online SQL Tutorial: https://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp https://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp Dunno how far that will get you; certainly seems to cover the basics of syntax and so on. The harder part is the mindset, thinking in sets and being able to translate what you want to do into SQL. But I guess that's the hardest part of... Well, pretty much everything. And hard to package into lessons; maybe it's something everyone has to grok for themselves, so it can't hurt to try this first -- at least it seems free of charge. (I've looked up stuff, probably including SQL AFAICR, on W3Schools and never paid anything.) I suppose one of the best things you could do is download some simple SQL client (and possibly server), SQLite or MariaDB or Firebird or something, and an example dataset like Northwind Trading or some such, and just start playing around. Hope this helps!
- zbhoy 4y agoThanks for sharing! The idea of also downloading some stuff and just playing around is helpful. Might do that alongside courses
- qohen 4y agoThere are many free resources online for learning SQL. Here are some of them: Khan Academy has a SQL course: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/sql https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/s... The one in the first link below is interesting in that it then sets you up for the SQL Murder Mystery in the second link: https://mystery.knightlab.com/walkthrough.html https://mystery.knightlab.com/walkthrough.html https://mystery.knightlab.com/ https://mystery.knightlab.com/ The "walkthrough" link above mentions that if you want to learn SQL more deeply to try selectstarsql.com, which looks good: https://selectstarsql.com/ https://selectstarsql.com/ This looks interesting too: https://sqlzoo.net/wiki/SQL_Tutorial https://sqlzoo.net/wiki/SQL_Tutorial Most of the above have databases available for you to immediately try out what you're learning, which should be helpful (sqlzoo.net also seems to have some more advanced topics covered too). There are also a bunch of (multi-hour) courses on YouTube: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayoutube.com+sql+course https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayoutube.com+sql+cours... If you go the video route, there are sites like SqlFiddle.com and freedatabase.com, etc. that let you set up databases so you can practice what you learn from the videos without having to install anything (though you can do that too, of course): https://www.google.com/search?online+sql+database https://www.google.com/search?online+sql+database I hope you find at least some of the above to be useful. Good luck with it.
- zbhoy 4y agoThis is amazing! Thank you so much
- qohen 4y agoYou're welcome. :-) Also, there are some (legitimately) free SQL books that might be worth a look: https://www.linuxlinks.com/excellent-free-books-learn-sql/ https://www.linuxlinks.com/excellent-free-books-learn-sql/ Then there's this freebie, which is interesting in that it's compiled from StackOverflow, whose content is licensed under Creative-Commons -- GoalKicker has a bunch of these on various tech topics. Anyway, the SQL one might have some useful tips/tricks: https://books.goalkicker.com/SQLBook/SQLNotesForProfessionals.pdf https://books.goalkicker.com/SQLBook/SQLNotesForProfessional... (It has gotten good ratings and reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40730648-sql-notes-for-professionals#other_reviews https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40730648-sql-notes-for-p... ) They also have such books on specific databases: MySQL, Postgres, SQLServer and Oracle -- see all their books on their main page: https://books.goalkicker.com https://books.goalkicker.com And, once you learn SQL, you might want to check out webpages (and YouTube videos) of SQL tips/tricks to pick up useful tidbits: https://www.google.com/search?q=sql+tips https://www.google.com/search?q=sql+tips https://www.google.com/search?q=sql+tricks https://www.google.com/search?q=sql+tricks