Practice SQL Online
A Short Resource Guide
LinkedIn recently released its 2023 Most In-Demand Skills list. Unsurprisingly, management, communication, and customer service are among the top 3 soft skills.
Soft skills are great, but somewhat harder to quantify compared to hard skills.
The hard skills list is dominated by software development-related skills. SQL is ranked #2 among the top 10 in-demand hard skills. In today’s data-driven world, you don’t have to be a software developer to use SQL. Many businesses rely on SQL to manage their data and help drive data-driven decisions.
I want to provide you with free resources to practice SQL. I use SQL at my job, but it’s easy to get pigeonholed into specific tasks. When this happens you stop expanding and learning anything new.
Plenty teach it, but few tell us how to practice it. Chances are you learned it, got some online certificate and now it’s collecting digital dust. Or, you’re like me who uses it professionally but wants to learn more.
Websites
- MySQL Developer Database — This is the equivalent of reading the user manual to your refrigerator. It’s straight from the source. Their website has a plethora of news, information, and learning.
Looking for another SQL language database? Most dialects of SQL have reference manuals on their websites such as MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.
- W3schools — W3schools’ reference manual for all SQL languages is easy to use and one of my favorite websites to reference.
- Hackerrank — Hackerrank is a website that will give you real examples to solve with SQL. Earn points and rewards as you level up your SQL knowledge, and take advantage of the community discussion boards.
- Kaggle — Kaggle is an online community platform for data scientists. There are many avenues to take here. You can find free datasets, compete in high-paying competitions, or study the work of others. I think the latter is most useful for those still learning SQL. You can dissect the Extract, Transform, Learn (ETL) stage from other people who have used SQL in their projects.
- SQLzoo — A Wikipedia-style page that also contains quizzes to test your knowledge.
- Sql-practice.com — SQL-practice is a live IDE environment to write out SQL with existing databases, all within your browser.
Online Learning Platforms
There is much to be said about the value provided by online learning platforms. I won’t go into too much detail, but feel free to look into this list if you want long-form courses. Many of these also provide certificates upon completion. Keep in mind, most of these are paid courses.
- Coursera
- Teachable
- Masterclass
- Podia
- Udemy
- Kahn Academy
- Udacity
- Kaggle
- LinkedIn Learning
Books
People don’t seem to turn to books anymore, but they are still a more than valid resource to learn SQL.
Books can help you understand things in a way that videos or courses cannot, and vice-versa. I recommend using both methods to maximize efficiency.
Extra Bonus (Top Secret)
Don’t tell your recruiter or HR about this one.
LinkedIn Assessments is a way for professionals to showcase their knowledge on their LinkedIn Page. The answers to all of these assessments may or may not be located on GitHub.
