What are /r/learnSQL's favorite Products & Services?

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This is where you want to go: https://www.codewars.com/?language=sql

Now mind you their requirements are odd to say the least, but it does put you through your paces to meet their requirements and it does simulate daily SQL programming.

I'm a BI Engineer, I formally worked in the MS Stack. It's a good stack.

However, SSIS is for moving/streaming data between servers/database. You can use SQL as a definition of a source that is pulled from the source server. Most of the SQL with SSIS is pretty simple.

I would skip SSIS.

SSAS is when you take your dimensional model and you "cube" your data. Which takes your dimensions and blows up your data and preaggregates cross applied values. You use a different query language that looks much like SQL called MDX. If you are a beginner in SQL or intermediate, I wouldn't attempt to create your own cube. If you can find a source that you can query online, I would do that.

I'd skip SSIS and if you are curious, look up and learn MDX.

SSRS is basically an antiquated Tableau with far less features. It's excel level of dashboard elements. It's worth looking at but setting up your instance is a pain. Hopefully, the runtime on the MAC version of VS studio will render inside VS. I don't think there is a report builder for mac.

To get started on any of those download and include the SQL Data Tools with your install

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

To get started on MSSQL you'll need an equivalent to SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) which Microsoft says is Azure Data Studio.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download-azure-data-studio?view=sql-server-ver15

MS SQL Server does not run on mac but you can run a virtual box with linux on MAC and install SQL Server on it. However, I don't even know if SSIS is supported on SQL Server for Linux yet. It wasn't a few years ago.

My personal recommendation is to focus on learning SQL as a query language. You may want to try PostgreSQL as it has many of the more advanced features that MSSQL provides.

If you want to get better at SQL, I would suggest you to solve Problems on Leetcode.com There are many SQL questions asked my top companies in their interviews. And don't try to learn the basics again, keep solving these problems and if you get stuck and did not understand or remember then only look at the basics but only for solving that particular problem. If you never get out of the habit of perfecting the basics then you will never able to learn the advanced things. If you want to learn new things in SQL, then I would suggest you to learn How to create and manage database in the cloud like Amazon Redshift or how to work with MongoDB. I have seen in many job descriptions, companies look for candidates who can work with AWS, Google cloud or Azure. There are also good SQL exercises on stratascratch.com , you can also try that. Solve as many problems as you can and don't get stuck at learning the basics.

I think the issue might be that CodeAcademy's SQL lessons are written for an audience familiar with already drilling down in data in Excel spreadsheets, and need a quick lesson in SQL to do what they already know, and to take the next step out of Excel spreadsheets and into a real database. In this case, CodeAcademy's examples are actual scrubbed visitor data to the CodeAcademy website. There are extra tables in the schema describing all sorts of relevant fields useful for a marketing professional, and for helping them talk to company web administrators to get the data and the analysis they need to determine something like source of customer traffic (i.e. from schools or households, what neighborhoods to target new billboard advertisements), or for the web administrator in purchasing more gear to increase the website's the browsing capacity.

CodeAcademy didn't do a great job in explaining where their lesson plan is coming from, but depending on their audience, it might be how they chose to use their lesson development time.

Look into SoloLearn https://www.sololearn.com/Course/SQL/ perhaps, for a straight up course in SQL, with simpler starting table structures. It won't have the data analysis stuff of the Code Academy course.

I'm guessing the Khan Academy stuff on basic data analysis might be too easy for you, but if not, start there, (you can also jump to the "Data Inference" section)! https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/sat/sat-math-practice/new-sat-problem-solving-data-analysis/v/sat-math-q1-easier

Using MySQL Workbench might help ease the pain. Anyway: Learn to code. Python is not difficult to pick up, and would lead you to projects in which you could leverage SQL in a concrete way which might be easier to grasp.

SQL Queries for Mere Mortals was a good source back when I was in college learning SQL. It's received a number of updates over time, but it still relevant and still useful. I continued to reference it early in my career.

Amazon Link

PowerShell can do that. There are better tools.

/R/PowerShell used to be pretty active

This book was helpful when I ran sql stuff in PowerShell https://www.amazon.com/PowerShell-Database-Developers-Bryan-Cafferky/dp/1484205421

Iirc PowerShell can only do it row by row. It's slow but reliable.

Or how about this. Are you trying to learn PowerShell and want to play or is this something you're trying to solve?

Sure, here is a short list for what I think beginners ought to learn

1. Database design principles. The fundamentals of this will leverage more advanced topics. Its extremely important you spend time focusing on this topic. Without knowing best practice standards in terms of building your db, you will never understand why some issues arise. That old saying "an ounce of prevention..." really applies here - and alot of times you might not be able to undo some things (looks at legacy apps with scorn).

2. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J89I7PI/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
   go buy this book. As a SQL Developer, this guy really knows his stuff. He even goes over the first bullet point.

3. After you have good db design principles down, go find a practice database (northwinds for example). Start trying to build queries that you think would help display data in a web portal. Think of your amazon account for example. By trying to emulate things like that, you can quickly get used to writing queries. Use the book above for some techniques to practice.

I am also a fan of W3schools. I think the biggest skill you can learn is learning how to deal with ambiguity and learning how to take documentation and turn it into action. Most of the time youre lucky and have stack overflow or reddit for assistance. Other times you only have poor documentation to go off of. Youd be wise to get good at it now :)

I recommented SQL for Data Analytics as a book to work through. I took the same Udemy course and I think this book takes those skills and expands on them. As you can tell from the name, it's focused on data analytics rather than DBA. The Udemy course (if it's the same one I'm thinking of) has you set up PostGres database. This book authors have a github where you can download the data to create a database in PostGres to use to work through the book. I don't think I could have done the book wtihout the Udemy course first, but the book advanced my SQL skills and gave a lot of examples on how to apply the SQL skills in an analytical way to solve problems. There is a 2nd edition, I just have the first version.

This might be a good start: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/how-can-i-prevent-sql-injection-in-php

Another solution to look at as a stop-gap and to prevent future attacks is to put the server behind Cloudflare. If you can afford the Pro account you can enable the WAF (Web Application Firewall) which can mitigate most of these sort of attacks. https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/

I normally do one SQL Leetcode problem every morning as I drink my coffee.

I really don't code in SQL anymore but it's a fun way to start the day and stay in practice:

https://leetcode.com/problemset/database/

If you go to:

https://leetcode.com/problemset/database/

You can practice SQL questions. I wouldn't call them real-world, but they certainly make you think.

There are other sites that do a nice mimic of SQL Server but I find the best practice is when you have your own instance.

So I recommend to either spin up a VM on your mac or I recommend to check out Amazon RDS which is SQL Server in the cloud by Amazon. (With some limitations, but less than the sites that mimic SQL Server.)

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/free/

If you're doing the Google data analyst certificate then you should have enough SQL to start doing some projects on your own. Another SQL course will just go over the same things you're already learning.

Some sites I like though are:

• dataxp, which hosts projects with code available online: https://www.dataxp.ai/
• Hacker Rank, which has several questions of varying difficulty. I've seen this site, and others like it, used for technical interviews: https://www.hackerrank.com/

I'm taking the google cert course too (assuming you're talking about the data analytics one). How far in are you?

I just got to week four of the 5th course Analyze Data to Answer Questions. I've been using hackerrank, although some of their "easy" prompts are definitely not. But it's been a really good tool. Also the discussion forums allow you to see what others have done and you can apply what you learn there to other queries.

For something like this I think you'd need a different tool, possibly apache drill? Check it out, you can use sql to query system files and processes I believe. I saw this too: https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/collecting-mysql-statistics-and-metrics/

Here you can find some good web-based courses: 18+ Best Online Resources for Learning SQL and Database Concepts

I do recommend learning SQL - it'll be just another tool in your belt. If something happens to cause you to get out of your current field of study, bam, you have a door open for you in the realm of D&A work. You could go into data visualization fairly easily, for example, with a basis in SQL, you then learn Tableau etc. (other data viz platforms) on youtube. And those jobs are in DEMAND. Btw, I have found datacamp.com very useful for learning SQL. Of course there are many ways to do it.

I would suggest you to learn from datacamp or stratascratch. DataCamp.com is cool for video tutorials and Stratascratch.com has the exercises with the questions directly from the technical interviews taken from companies and universities.

What database will you work with? There are different database systems that all support their dialect of SQL. It would be good to get familiar with the particular system that you'll be working with.

E.g. Oracle Database, MS SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL etc.

If you don't know what system you'll work with yet MS SQL Server is a safe bet with pretty good end user tools. You can download Developer Edition from here. Scroll down to Developer and download that one. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads. Also install SQL Server Management Studio as an end user interface. I believe it's included in the installer but you might need to check a checkbox or something if it's not selected by default.

Maybe check out SQL Antipatterns. I havent read it yet, but am interested in reading it myself.

SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming (Pragmatic Programmers) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1934356557/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apan_glt_fabc_5YJ7WBN6H146W2KA06F1

I've been slowly making my way through Sam's Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes and I'm finding it very useful and I feel confident to list SQL at a beginner level as a skill on my resume.

While I haven't read it, this MIGHT help you as it sounds like you're asking a bit more about database design vs strictly SQL --- The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471200247/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_6u19CbJBT79D6

Your best best is Learn SQL in 10 Minutes by Ben Forta. It's a good patch book to get you started.

https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Minutes-Sams-Teach-Yourself-ebook/dp/B009XDGF2C/ref=sr_1_1?crid=MMKH08U87IOO&keywords=sams+teach+yourself+sql+in+10+minutes&qid=1554784915&s=gateway&sprefix=sams+teach+yours%2Caps%2C154&sr=8-1

Hey there. As u/MyDictainabox mentioned, the T-SQL Query Fundamentals book is great. I've been thumbing through the older edition (I believe it's 2012 or 2014). Itzik really knows his stuff and it's something that I've been using to help me improve my skills. He goes very deep into so many aspects of SQL - it's just one of those resources that can really help you branch out. He explains topics so well so that it can be easily understood.

I also wrote a book on SQL Server and database fundamentals, which is primarily for beginners. I'd be happy to send you a copy of it for free in hopes to give you more resources to pull from. It's also free on Amazon on August 9th, 2018, if you'd like to grab a copy from there. It has screenshots, examples and exercises that you can do as well.

PM me if you're interested!

Database Design for Mere Mortals by Michael Hernandez.