Articles Cookbook
25 Sep 2019
Shanika Wickramasinghe

Why Use SQL Over Excel

SQL is replacing Excel in many fields, and data analysis is certainly one of them. If you are still using Excel as a data analyst, you are missing something very valuable. SQL can make your life easier, as it's more efficient and faster than Excel. So, how and from where can you learn SQL? How Can SQL Help Data Analyst? You can use SQL to help you with the following work:
Read more
11 Sep 2019
Dorota Wdzięczna

The Most Important SQL Queries for Beginners

How do you get data from a table? How do you create or delete a table? How do you display distinct records? How do you select rows which store a specific value in a column? You can easily do all of this by writing basic SQL queries. This guide discusses the 30 most important SQL queries for beginners. Let's take a look. 1. Retrieving Data From All Columns This is a very basic query to display all data from a table.
Read more
30 Jul 2019
Jakub Romanowski

YouTube Tutorials That Actually Teach You Some SQL

YouTube is not just funny cats, music clips, and viral videos. It can also be a mine of knowledge – if you know where to look. Can YouTube tutorials really help you learn SQL? Let's say you're a marketer or an accountant. You work with databases every day. But when it’s time to write a query and get specific data, you need to call someone from IT. Why not learn to do it yourself?
Read more
2 Jul 2019
Tihomir Babic

Career Change: From Accountant to Database Designer

How do career changes and life choices impact our future? Can we change the path that's been set for us? And if so, where do we begin? I wouldn't blame you if you thought this article is about change. In a sense, it is—it's in the title, after all. But for me, this article is more about what remains constant. If somebody were to ask me what hasn't changed for me since my childhood, I would know the answer immediately: curiosity.
Read more
18 Jun 2019
Dorota Wdzięczna

24 Rules to the SQL Formatting Standard

Writing queries to a database requires knowledge about SQL syntax, but this is not all you should know. Best practices for writing professional SQL code require good formatting skills. In this article I discuss why this is so important and what are the basic rules you should follow. Why is it Worthwhile to Format SQL Code? Beginner SQL programmers often don't pay much attention to formatting their code. If you think formatting is something that can be safely ignored, look at the code below:
Read more
30 Apr 2019
Ignacio L. Bisso

SQL INNER JOIN Explained in Simple Words

In this article, I will cover perhaps the most important element of the SQL language. That's right! I'm talking about the SQL INNER JOIN clause. As you know, in a database the data are stored in several tables. In my last article, I covered how to create SQL queries when the data you need is in only one table. But what if the data you need is in two tables?
Read more
19 Mar 2019
Dorota Wdzięczna

14 Differences Between Standard SQL and Transact-SQL

In my last article, I roughly described how standard SQL differs from T-SQL and who should learn which. Now I'd like to focus on the syntax differences and illustrate these differences with examples. If you think T-SQL is an extension implementing all the features from standard SQL, you aren't right. However, in SQL Server you will find almost all the features of the SQL standard. In this article you will find examples of some of the differences in syntax between standard SQL and Transact-SQL.
Read more
20 Feb 2019
Michał Kołodziejski

Get to Know the Power of SQL Recursive Queries

Most commonly, the SQL queries we run on a database are quite simple. Well, that depends on your role, of course. Analysts in data warehouses retrieve completely different sorts of information using (very often) much more complicated queries than software engineers creating CRUD applications. However, sometimes it's simpler or more elegant to run a query that is a little bit more sophisticated without needing further data processing in the code.
Read more
19 Feb 2019
Dorota Wdzięczna

What's the Difference Between SQL and T-SQL?

If you are beginning to learn SQL and are confused by the differences between standard SQL and other similar languages like T-SQL, this article will help make things clear. You’ll not only learn about the difference between SQL and T-SQL but also find explanations concerning which topics would be better to start learning first: standard SQL or something more specific like MS SQL Server. What is Standard SQL? SQL (Structured Query Language) is a basic ANSI/ISO standard programming language designed to operate on data stored in relational databases.
Read more
7 Feb 2019
Ignacio L. Bisso

Learn SQL on Your Lunch Break

Do you think learning SQL will help you in your career? You are right. SQL is one of the easiest computer languages to learn. These days many non-IT employees have SQL skills and use them to extend their professional capacity. Moreover, more and more companies are encouraging their employees in non-IT areas (like sales, advertising, and finances) to learn and use SQL. One of the benefits of empowering employees with SQL skills is that once you answer one data question, the results will generate a new data question, and then perhaps a cascade of further data questions.
Read more