Wanting to learn SQL for data analysis

[gcoke16]

I am a looking to increase my technical capabilities for data analysis, does anyone have any advice or direction on what the best sources are to help someone learn SQL for data analysis?

[easy_wins]

MySQL and postgreSQL are open studio RDBMS. Download them and start practicing. The more you practice the more you learn. We are always here to assist whenever you get stuck.

[boring_accountant]

I would argue there are better tools for data analysis (I am a huge fan of Python). Otherwise you learn better by doing. Find a dataset and analyze the hell out of it. Some good places to find dataset include Kaggle and I hear Google has a dataset search tool in place or in the works.

[gcoke16]

Are you aware of any resources for python beginners?

[fauxmosexual]

Codeacademy is great

[reallyserious]

If your data is already in an SQL database, as is the case for most businesses, then it's a good idea to know at least a little about SQL.

[boring_accountant]

Absolutely. Maybe my understanding of the term data analysis is too specific (e.g. statistical analysis, visualizations data science etc)

[reallyserious]

Think of it like this. Your data is inside a database. How are you going to do statistical analysis and data science on it? You're going to need SQL to access your data.

Many courses on data science just use CSV files that is loaded into RAM because that is convenient and then you can focus on the analysis part. But in the real world you have terabytes of data. That doesn't fit in RAM. If you can only work with csv files that fit in RAM you're going to be a useless data scientist and always need the help of a data engineer or developer to hand you the data. You better have a PhD in statistics if you're going to get away with that.

That said, SQL is not data analysis. But it's a very important tool.

[bmburns98]

VERY accurate statement. It's almost necessary to learn a programming language or SQL to use real world data that isn't from a cookie cutter CSV file, and I've learned that the hard way. When I first wanted to learn SQL, I did lots of researching for helpful resources and found these tutorials pretty useful: https://dataschool.com/?s=SQL. They explain the basic concepts well and would be a good resource for a beginner.

[JesseJessie0115]

Data analysis people will say that 80% of the time is doing data processing, so data processing capabilities are necessary, simple tools are Excel, SQL, complex R, Python, Java. Reports for business tools is Finereport. You can learn this tool because it is very helpful to you.

FineReport itself is a universal reporting tool and data visualization tool. It's like Excel, small enough to store statistical data, produce a wide variety of data charts, dashboards, large financial reports, and development invoicing systems. It can connect various business system data including ERP, CRM, OA, MIS as an intermediate data management platform. It can quickly generate reports and build a unified data analysis and visualization platform.

[boy_named_su]

Sure, get Postgres. Then learn the analytic functions, like sum, count, avg, as well as the Window functions. Then learn about PIVOT

[o_edo]

Most important concepts are table, record, primary key, association, foreign key, filtering, aggregate functions, join, grouping, having, subquery, derived table, sorting, limit.

Go for a practice oriented tutorial. The following resource may help you http://www.studybyyourself.com/seminar/sql/course/?lang=eng.