It seems like half of the discussion about SQL on the internet is about resources for learning SQL. Many of the frequent suggestions are ones that came out after I learned the basics, and so I haven’t used them. I want to take a moment to highlight three free internet resources that were vital in my SQL development.
1) Sabermetrics 101: Introduction to Baseball Analytics
Wait, what? This course from edX was actually my first exposure to SQL and sparked my interest in the language. The first half of the course is a fantastic overview of baseball analytics and its history, and it seamlessly integrates learning SQL by querying a comprehensive baseball statistics database. You can learn about slash stats and build some non-trivial SQL queries that will return interesting information. For example:
I found the difficulty level to be fantastic. Many of the queries are challenging for a beginner, but the course guides you through all of the techniques you will need to write them. I highly recommend this course (at least the first half - the second half is on R, and I didn’t finish it).
2) SQLCourse
At a first glance, this looks like a standard (and maybe a bit out-dated) SQL tutorial, but it has an important advantage: it has a SQL interpreter that allows for creating/dropping tables and updates/deletes. So many SQL tutorials only really cover selecting.
It’s somewhat confusing, but the tutorial is split into two parts here and here. You can cover all of the material pretty quickly, and this is a great choice for an absolute beginner.
3) Kudvenkat’s SQL Server tutorial for beginner
This series of 136 Youtube videos is a fantastic resources for moving out of the SQL basics and into more intermediate and advanced topics. Kudvenkat breaks down difficult concepts very well and progresses through ideas in a way that makes sense. For example, his explanation of PIVOT in SQL Server is still my go to resource when I need to pivot in SQL Server about twice a year. He starts with the basics, explains complications, and provides a more complex but satisfying solution.
These are great videos that you can squeeze in when you have some free moments. I like them so much that I’m working through his C# videos now.