Writing Better SQL in 90 Minutes—with Interactivity
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Practical tips for writing more efficient SQL queries
Beginner SQL courses often start by teaching the basics of writing SQL queries, including things like the order of the clauses (SELECT, FROM, etc.) or ways to JOIN multiple tables (INNER versus OUTER). However, almost every SQL beginner runs into issues when writing their first queries that pull data from tables with millions of rows. The queries may take minutes or hours to complete. Though beginner SQL courses help coders write working SQL code, they don’t often address how to write efficient SQL code.
Join expert Alice Zhao to get practical tips on how to speed up your queries and write better SQL code. In just 90 minutes, you’ll review what goes on behind the scenes when a query is executed, discover how to tweak a query so that it runs faster, and find out how to use an index to speed up a query.
Hands-on learning with interactive scenarios
All exercises and labs are provided as O'Reilly interactive scenarios—complete development environments that are preconfigured with everything you need. There's nothing to install or configure; just click a link and get started!
Interactive scenarios are sandboxed, so you can explore, experiment, and tinker without fear of breaking anything. And you can revisit them anytime after class ends to practice and refine your skills.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
By the end of this live online course, you’ll understand:
- What goes on behind the scenes when a query is executed
- How to tweak a query so that it runs faster
- What an index is and how to use it to speed up a query
And you’ll be able to:
- Think through and test out multiple approaches to optimize SQL queries
- Alter your SQL queries so that they run faster
This live event is for you because...
- You’re just getting started with SQL.
- You’re a beginner or intermediate SQL user who works with large data sets.
- You want to speed up your SQL queries.
Prerequisites
- Familiarity with SQL queries (SELECT, FROM, etc.)
Recommended preparation:
- Read “SQL Crash Course” (chapter 1 of SQL Pocket Guide, fourth edition)
Recommended follow-up:
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Introduction (15 minutes)
- Presentation: Behind the scenes of a SQL query
- Group discussion: Share past issues with SQL queries
Tips for writing better SQL (40 minutes)
- Presentation: Tips on how to alter SQL queries to make them faster
- Demo: See the difference in runtimes when a query is modified
- Q&A
- Break (5 minutes)
Indexes (10 minutes)
- Presentation: What’s an index?
- How an index works + how to use an index to make queries faster
- Q&A
Interactive exercise (15 minutes)
- Exercise: Improve an SQL Query
- Q&A
Wrap-up (5 minutes)
- Presentation: Summary + advice on next steps
- Q&A
Your Instructor
Alice Zhao
Alice Zhao is a data scientist who’s passionate about teaching and making complex things easy to understand. She’s the author of the SQL Pocket Guide, fourth edition (O’Reilly) and has taught numerous courses in SQL, Python, and R as a senior data scientist at Metis and as a cofounder of Best Fit Analytics. She writes about analytics and pop culture on her blog, A Dash of Data. Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, Thrillist, and Working Mother. She has her MS in analytics and BS in electrical engineering, both from Northwestern University.