SQL: From the Basics to the Nitty Gritty
Taught by Lauren E.
Lauren loves Dinosaurs, Lincoln, running, and the Internet. A Ruby programmer by day, she got her start writing piles upon piles of SQL. Even though Ruby on Rails gives her a much prettier interface, she still prefers to write her SQL directly, to keep things speedy and neat. Outside of her programming life, her favorite dinosaur is the Chasmosaurus (the namesake of the blog, "Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs"), followed closely by the Nigersaurus and Rugops. Every year, she celebrates Lincoln's birthday with civil war food, a top hat, and a toast. When not talking about Lincoln or Dinosaurs, she is an enthusiastic lover of the Internet, and enjoys (literally) running around the city and taking courses in anything and everything.
Learn how to get started with SQL, a powerful programming language used to manage databases. Though many developers no longer write SQL, understanding and controlling data directly can make your programs faster, your website smarter, or provide a great intro on getting started with computer programming. With access to your company databases and a little SQL knowledge, you can pull your own data and generate reports custom to what you need!
We'll introduce the basics of SQL, how to start thinking about data and data schemas, and how to query your tables. From there, we'll talk about more advanced SQL methods, how to aggregate and concat, the case for writing your own SQL, and some tips and tricks to make your queries much faster (hint: indexes!) Finally, we can debate the merits of SQL and noSQL, postgreSQL and MySQL, and any other big data store topics that interest us.
This class is aimed at anyone with an interest in programming and data. A basic familiarity with SQL is helpful but not required - we'll start from square one!
