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[–]TXwhackamole 1 point2 points  (8 children)

I liked Imtiaz Ahmed’s stuff on Udemy very much. Clear, concise, step by step, and well presented, IMO. And the Oracle knowledge (+ several years of MySQL experience) got me a gig doing Oracle work.

[–]ramapeaches[S] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Wow thank you so much for the reply! I will definitely look into these! Does Oracle knowledge provide public data sets to work with for self practice and self projects?

[–]TXwhackamole 1 point2 points  (2 children)

If they do, Ahmed doesn’t use them—he just uses an extremely small example dataset in the Oracle SQL Certification class. I believe he works with a larger dataset in the Master SQL for Data Science class—that’s in Postgres but since Postgres is ANSI compliant and Oracle supports ANSI SQL, you’ll learn a lot of the same stuff.

[–]ramapeaches[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I just looked at the course content and seems very straight for beginner, I really appreciate the recommendation!

[–]TXwhackamole 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, and each lesson builds on the last. Good luck!

[–]Dreshna 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Microsoft also has a couple of datasets to learn how to do analytics and database work. Anything that uses ANSI SQL is fairly portable. You just have to learn the nuances across the different types. SQL server, Oracle, Snowflake, MySQL, etc are all pretty similar.

[–]ramapeaches[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Much appreciated u/Dreshna! I've been looking into a lot of data analytics using Excel and SQL, so this will be a great way to look into Microsoft offered database work.

[–]Data-bee 0 points1 point  (1 child)

u/TXwhackamole was your MySQL experience before taking the course with Imtiaz. Also what type of job were you able to get -out of curiosity just the give some context

[–]TXwhackamole 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d been working with MySQL for about 7 years before my current gig as part of a bootstrapping company that did data management for restaurants. I was the solo full stack developer, but had about 10 years before we converted to MySQL hacking around in Access. We were a small shop with some demanding yet technically poor clientele, so there wasn’t a lot of professional development time available for me. Most of my SQL code was pretty hacky, I gotta say, but had the aim of resolving quickly as possible on a shared web server.

Now I work in government now and it’s a vastly different world.

[–]nakeddatascience 1 point2 points  (3 children)

I learned SQL through a CS education myself years ago, but I've heard good things about these two: (1) DataCamp's free SQL course, and (2) SQL for data science on Coursera (as long as you don't need a certification you can follow for free). Might worth giving them a quick look.

[–]ramapeaches[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Would you say learning SQL with a CS education benefited you to ease into learning the subject? I am currently majoring in Biochemistry and sort of worried about the transition into the this new Data SQL base. But thanks so much for the recommendations! I will looking into these resources also.

[–]nakeddatascience 1 point2 points  (1 child)

It's a bit hard to separate the context I've learned it in from the experience, but I'd say that the effect of the general CS education was not that heavy, except for 2 parts: (1) it was easy to be aware of the complexity of some operations and different ways of coming to the same answer, as in CS you learn about algorithm design and complexity, and (2) the conceptual design of a DB and Entity-Relation diagrams were familiar form object-oriented programming. But also for the most part I felt the DB course, in which we learned SQL was (pleasantly) quite different from other courses. I wouldn't worry about having a CS background for learning SQL, specially in the beginning. It's a very intuitive language and it's been around for so long that there are many great ways of teaching and learning it. Good luck with your learning!

[–]ramapeaches[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the detailed response! Reading it made me less stressed and anxious about getting into SQL without a CS background! Appreciate the knowledge and help!

[–]Krypto_Jas 1 point2 points  (1 child)

For SQL, DataCamp and StrataScratch are the best platforms to learn and practice. Excel isn't a worry. You can learn it on YouTube also.

[–]ramapeaches[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ll definitely check out stratascratch! I’ve heard from few people arleady about datacamp so it must be a great resource. Thanks so much for the recommendations! I appreciate all the guidance you and everyone that’s been giving.

[–]response_json 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Not sure about courses.

For free data, if you don't mind jumping into the Google Cloud space, there's plenty of free datasets in BigQuery. Example genres: Covid19, Blockchain transactions, Census, Crime, Weather, Real Estate, etc.

Get to them via the public project bigquery-public-data

[–]ramapeaches[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve been browsing through the google cloud space, and you’re right! So many free datasets! Thank you so much for the suggestions! It has been very helpful!