
Explore SQL essentials through a new learning approach built on five fundamentals, starting with theory before queries, plus community support and Windows-only labs.
Adopts a practical, essentials-first approach to SQL, teaching the 80/20 rule to master core patterns and few join types that cover the majority of day-to-day queries.
Participate fully in practices, exercises, quizzes, and labs, using the same data to build SQL skills for work or school, and set up your lab with Discord community help.
Learn to use sql server management studio to access sql server, navigate the object explorer, and run queries across databases. Switch between master, model, Joynes class database; refresh metadata.
Explore uniqueness and grain, and how primary keys and composite keys enforce row-level uniqueness. Understand how grain defines what a row represents and informs query design.
Explore relationships in SQL, focusing on one-to-many and many-to-many connections using orders, order lines, and products. Learn how a bridge table clarifies many-to-many joins and aids query troubleshooting.
Master the execution order of SQL queries by following from, where, group by, having, select, and finally order by, and discover how joins and aggregates shape results.
Apply the five fundamentals to master execution order, uniqueness and final grain, and understand joins, grouping, and columns to produce accurate reports.
Explore how joins relate rows from separate tables, using orders and order lines as examples, and see how inner joins and other join types reveal mismatches and missing data.
Learn join syntax within the from clause, using on to match columns for inner joins, and preview outer joins with left or right variants, linking data sources.
Learn how to perform an inner join by matching rows on order ID, using aliases to simplify references, and examine the resulting one-to-many grain across orders and order lines.
Visualize left and right sides to think through join, using parentheses and an inner join to combine A and B. Then extend the result with C and D, avoiding backtracking.
Join the waterlines and products tables using product_id with an inner join, explore one-to-many and many-to-one grain, and learn to select specific columns for accurate results.
Explore slightly more complex SQL examples by joining orders, order lines, and products with inner joins, managing grain, and using clear aliases, ordering, and where clauses to filter results.
Practice inner join exercises by joining customers, orders, order lines, and products, explore grain and one-to-many versus many-to-one relationships, and build correct, efficient SQL queries.
Explore outer joins in SQL and learn how left, right, and full outer joins extend inner joins by returning nonmatching rows, revealing powerful data relationships.
Explore how left and right outer joins reveal unmatched data, distinguish inner from outer joins, and filter with is null to identify unsold products.
Generate and explore large, randomized order data to practice joins and aggregates, test data quality, and understand how to handle real-world, imperfect SQL datasets.
Discover how the group by clause buckets rows by a criterion and uses aggregate functions like count, average, min, and max to summarize data by color or other groups.
Master grouping and aggregates in SQL by grouping order lines by order id, counting items, summing revenue (quantity times price), and using distinct prices.
Learn to filter aggregated results with the having clause after grouping by order IDs, using total amount to identify big orders, and why where cannot filter aggregates.
Learn how subqueries create custom row sets and can be used in where, select, or from clauses, with aliases, joins, and views to shape data at the right grain.
For exercise 1, learn to write authentic SQL to identify top earning products by joining order lines to products, grouping by product, and summing revenue, with date filters and sorting.
Explore data anomalies and patterns by validating data, checking relationships and uniqueness, and using aggregates. Learn to test assumptions and explore orders and order lines with practical SQL queries.
Seek help beyond this course through the school community, share future topics in the comments, and remember that SQL basics like joins, groupings, and execution orders stay useful.
Celebrates completing the SQL essentials course and thanks learners for joining, highlighting the educational experience, exercises, and community engagement, and looks forward to seeing you in another class.
Most SQL courses I've seen teach it in the same old way that I struggled with when I first learned SQL. I set out a long time ago to come up with a better way to approach the topic that would be much easier and faster to learn. This new method has worked well and now you have the chance to learn from this method also!
What You'll Learn
The five fundamentals of SQL - The theory behind SQL
How to use the five fundamentals to guide your SQL query development and understanding
How to read, write, and understand inner and outer joins
How to read, write, and understand groupings and aggregate functions
Use joins and grouping patterns that will help you validate data assumptions and explore data
Why Learn SQL?
SQL is a skill that is in high demand. Take it from me, I am a data professional and there is certainly no shortage of great paying jobs and career paths using data and SQL. I've also interacted with many people that are not data professionals, that all wished they knew SQL better because it was a part of their job as well!
What's So Special About This Course?
There are a lot of SQL courses out there. Most of the time it's basically a long winded list of code, syntax, and descriptions of what things are, but with no real application or teaching on how they work together and what's really going on. In other words, nobody actually understands it well enough to query their own databases after the class is over. It also takes years of practice to really "get it." I can personally attest to this problem. When I took my first database class in college, I didn't do very well and I even decided I'd never deal with databases again. It was very frustrating! This class aims to fix this issue by teaching you how to approach any query in a repeatable process, and to teach you what properties of a dataset to pay attention to in order to assure understanding, query success, and data accuracy.
I've also found that most people that already know SQL (and some are pretty good at it!) still struggle with understanding the primary concepts in this course, joins and groupings. Most people just guess at which join type to use, see what the results look like, and hope for the best. This course is the fix for that. After going through this course you should have no doubt in your mind at all which join to use, why you're using it, and have a similar confidence with groupings and aggregate functions as well. If you can understand these two main concepts(joins and groupings), just about everything else in SQL is based on these two concepts and SQL becomes easy. That's why this course contains mostly material on these two areas, they really are the essentials of SQL!
Finally, this course is shorter than most. Other courses will try and teach you everything. In my experience, this is counterproductive because 80% or more of what was in the course is not used or even necessary, and serves to be even more confusing and overwhelming. By shortening this course to teach the essentials, the course is a lot less intimidating, and it's all you need for most queries.
Who Should Take This Course
Anyone that wants to learn SQL or enhance their skills with SQL
Anyone that has taken another SQL class and still can't seem to understand how joins or groupings work
Anyone that wants to learn SQL faster and easier
Anyone that is frustrated with how SQL was taught to you or if you're just not that confident in your SQL abilities
Students, developers, budding data professionals, data scientists, managers, accountants, marketers, report writers, etc.
Prerequisites
You need a modern Windows computer with access to install software in order to do the examples and labs in this course because it is based on SQL Server. This is technically optional, but I highly recommend doing the labs to get the most benefit from this course.
This course doesn't start at absolute zero, but it is a beginner level course. Before you start this course you should know what a database is, and be able to write and understand very basic queries. By very basic, I'm talking about being able to pull data from one table and filter the rows with a where clause. Once you can do that, you're ready to learn joins and start this course.
What Are You Waiting For?
I'm excited to teach people SQL with this new method I created and I sincerely hope that it will serve you well any time you need to use SQL! I have already helped many others using this method with great results. I invite you to give this course a try. With the 30 day money back guarantee, you can't lose!