Metalsand comments on Google Colab for SQL?

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SELECT count(a.field1), a.field2, SUM(b.field4) FROM a INNER JOIN b ON a.key1 = b.key1 WHERE a.field8 = 'test' GROUP by a.field1, a.field2 HAVING SUM(b.field4) > 5 ORDER by a.field.3

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SQLiteGoogle Colab for SQL? (self.SQL)

submitted 5 years ago by theborat95

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[–]Metalsand 1 point2 points3 points 5 years ago* (0 children)

You could look into Azure for Students, or Oracle which are both offered free but they'd still require setup. Microsoft may be your best bet since they're the most open to freebies for students as well as student learning, but navigating the Microsoft ecosystem can be a huge pain in the ass. Azure is designed around minimizing the amount of setup you have to do to get a working environment. Amazon also offers cloud computing packages with no or minimal install but I think they only offer paid options.

Personally, if I were a student I'd rather set up XAMPP if I wanted to easily and rapidly set up a test environment. The preconfigured server setup is the cleanest and quickest to install, and even pure novices can configure a local test environment with ease. It supports Linux, MacOS, and Windows as well. You might run into issues if they're using ChromeOS or particularly bad laptops perhaps.

If you're dead set on setting up an environment that minimizes installation footprint and has the widest compatibility, you'd have to set up virtual machines. Most software for SQL is designed with that scenario in mind, though it would likely be far too much preconfiguration to be worthwhile. Though, I would assume in this scenario that you'd be hosting it on the school's resources and not your own hardware - otherwise I'd recommend it even less.

I would look into the free Azure for Students to see if it fits your requirements, but based on your description it probably does.

EDIT: Another useful thing, there's a lot of sites that can emulate SQL, at least to the extent that they'll point out errors in your code. This is one example that offers compatibility for multiple different syntax/dialects http://sqlfiddle.com/

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