SQL Best Practices
Unlock your full potential as a data analyst with our SQL best practices course! Learn how to write efficient queries that are easy to maintain and scale. Gain hands-on experience in writing clean and readable SQL code, enabling you to take on complex projects with confidence.
About the SQL Best Practices Course
Take your SQL coding skills to the next level with our SQL Best Practices course! Learn the essential principles of formatting and structuring your code to ensure it's efficient, effective, and easy to maintain. Gain hands-on experience in writing clean and readable SQL code, enabling you to take on complex projects with confidence. Become the best data analyst with this online training course!
Skill Level
Beginner
Video Length
90 min
Pre-requisites
Basic SQL Knowledge
Certificate of Completion
SQL Best Practices: Course Content
01. Course Overview
- 1.01: Course Introduction
- 1.02: About Your Instructor
02. Course Learning Content
- 2.01: Indentation
- 2.02: Lines Between Sections, Wrapping Text
- 2.03: Aliases
- 2.04: One Item per Line
- 2.05: Multiple Case Conditions
- 2.06: Capitalization
- 2.07: Leading Commas
- 2.08: Comma Confusion
- 2.09: Aggregate Function Placement
- 2.10: Aligned Joins
- 2.11: Block Code Comments
- 2.12: In-line Code Comments
- 2.13: Poor Code Comments
- 2.14: Common Table Expressions (CTEs)
- 2.19: Group by
- 2.20: Parama
- 2.21: Timestamp Field Names
- 2.22: 'In' Statements
- 2.15: Temp Tables
- 2.16: Select *
- 2.17: Where 1=1
- 2.18: Generic CTE Names
03. Course Wrap-up
- 3.01: Course Wrap-up
"I feel like I found a goldmine!"
"I remember my tutor trying to teach me C++. Nightmare. Brandon explaining SQL. Crystal clear."
Your Instructor:
Brandon Southern
Sr. Leader - Head of Analytics: US Prime & North America Stores Marketing at Amazon
Meet Brandon Southern (Sr. Leader at Amazon). Brandon is an expert data analytics and engineering, with over 20 years of experience in software engineering, quality assurance engineering, software release management, data engineering, and analytics. With more than 12 years of leadership experience across these domains, he has interviewed, hired, coached, and elevated professionals like you!
As a Senior Leader of Business Intelligence at Amazon, he leads business analysts and business intelligence engineers. He has a passion for helping others grow and developing world-class analytics solutions and teams, which led him to create Analytics Mentor. In his courses and coaching sessions, he will teach you how to develop the necessary skills to become one of the best professionals in the field of data and analytics. He will also show you how to incorporate the best practices that he has developed after working across multiple engineering roles. With his coaching, you'll develop your resume, prepare for interviews, negotiate for higher salaries, and grow your career. By the end of it, you'll become a world-class analyst and engineer and learn the best practices and skills that almost no other analytics team (even in the top tech companies) are using today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should I care? My code runs fine.
Just because your code runs doesn't mean that it runs efficiently or that it's easy to read. Poor performing code is costing your company money but is also costing you valuable time that you could be putting toward projects that will advance your career. Instead, without these practices you'll likely work more hours and produce fewer results than people that do use these practices. Your peers using these practices will out-pace you and pass you by for promotions and raises.
Poorly written code is also hard to read, which means that you'll create more bugs and have a more challenging time finding bugs. This results in damage to your personal brand where your leaders and peers my talk about the poor quality of your work, again putting your raises and promotions at risk.
What are the requirements for this course?
You'll need access to a computer or mobile device and you'll need access to the internet to view the course content. You will not need any special software (unless you would like to execute your own SQL statements), but you probably already have a database for this at home or work to try out these practices.
Why would someone with 20 years experience need this course?
I've been in Tech for 20 years and I have never seen a single data analyst/engineer or team utilize all of these practices, even though every software developer and software development teams follows similar practices for the languages that they program in.
Why don't data analysts/engineers use these practices when software developers do?
80% or more of software developers have a computer science degree, whereas less than 20% of data analysts have a computer science degree. Data analysts were never taught to use best practices. They were only taught to write code that runs and produces results. Also, data analysts positions are frequently considered non-technical roles, which has led to a lack of standards and best practices for almost all teams and companies.
How do we know that this is the right thing to do and works?
I've worked in Tech over the last 20 years in roles of software development, software quality assurance, software release management, data analytics, business intelligence, and more. I've been a people leader for more than 12 years of that time. I've implemented these same practices at the last 6 companies that I've worked for, including Amazon, eBay, VMWare, GameStop, and more! I've proven these practices to elevate data analyst and engineers to build them into the most talented individuals in the industry.
