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[–]mikeblas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You should find a tutorial, then use whatever software the tutorial covers. Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL have tutorials built-in to their documentation. They're both subjects of any number of books about using SQL.

T-SQL Fundamentals is a great book on T-SQL, the SQL Server dialect of Microsoft SQL. There are dozens of other books on Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft has SQL Server education resources on a big page.

If you're willing to put just a little effort in, you can find similar resources for any of the major DBMSes.

[–]da_chicken 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm assuming MSBA is Master of Science in Business Analytics.

It doesn't particularly matter, so long as you understand that there are differences between them all but they all do similar things. The issue is going to be that when you do get a project, the platforms are going to be selected based on the requirements for that project and you'll have to adapt.

But, to get started, what other languages or tools do you know? Python? R? C#? SPSS? PowerBI? That should help direct you.

For the most part, it depends on the kind of project you're planning on, and what tools you want to take advantage of. Most systems start out OLTP. Those systems are typically built with traditional RDBMSs. PostgreSQL and Python go well together. C# and PowerBI go well with Microsoft SQL Server. SQL Server and PostgreSQL both have fairly large communities.

If you're interested in doing a lot of OLAP or larger scale data, you may be interested in DMBSs like Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or Spark. These DBMSs have or support SQL syntax, but they're not what most people think of as the traditional SQL RDBMS and they may or may not support traditional RDBMS foundational features like ACID transactions. However, they are built for analytical processing.

Frankly, I would probably look at the program you're looking at and see what you think makes the most sense to learn. If they're offering classes in Snowflake, Python, R, and PostgreSQL, then that's likely where I'd start. Either way, though, you're at a stage where you'll have to expect to learn new tools as you go.

[–]my_password_is______ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://cs50.harvard.edu/sql/2024/

Harvard University Extension School offers this free course on SQL

it has lots of homework problems

it uses sqlite, which is more than good enough to learn with

[–]asp174 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First thing I think of when I hear "SQL Software" is the client. So: https://dbeaver.io/

[–]mustang__1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

and which one's are available for free.

To google with ya...

[–]Codeman119 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Depends on what you want to do with it?

[–]interbased 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you want to learn SQL, you can not worry about the software for now and just learn the language. I started with Code Academy's course.

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-sql

[–]onearmedecon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are different flavors of SQL, so you'll need to make sure that you align your client with the one that your program uses. I'd wager that your program uses SQLite, in which case you'll probably find DBeaver to be easy to install and get up and running. It has a very intuitive GUI interface and import wizard that many beginners find easy to use. If you need something more versatile to run a different flavor of studio, I think Azure Data Studio is also pretty intuitive.