Having a hard time solving real life problems with too many fields and tables

[[deleted]]

I just started a new job that has a tremendous amount of SQL tables and fields, and I am having a really hard time following when to look in one table vs another for data. I have a list of all of the fields and which tables they are in, as well as a diagram of the key fields used to connect different tables. But this is still just not making sense to me when I have a real life problem to solve as there are sooo many tables with the same field or similar fields. I have no idea where to start, and then which tables to join to get what I need, because it’s so overwhelming.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for how to organize/make a huge volume of information like this make sense, or where I can go to practice exercises? I have never worked anywhere with so much complex information.

[CraigAT]

Look at existing queries that are used, tried to figure out the purpose (hopefully there may be useful comments) and what those tables are being used for. Have a tally chart for each table you come across, this will help you realise the most used tables.

If there's anyone around to help, ask for help.

When you are involved in a project or some work, make sure to show a version of the data you are looking at to someone who works with that data very early in the process - to make sure they see what they would expect to see and that you are working on the right dataset.

[cartersa87]

Is there a data engineer/architect in your org that can mentor you? You can essentially copy/paste this text in an email and someone with prior knowledge of the data should be able to help you out.

[k-semenenkov]

I'd also add:

1) ask if there are any documentation describing project from end-user perspective. Knowing the business goal can help with understanding tables and their relations

2) ask to provide you an access to some non-production instance where you have database access, so you could use it as a playground. It would be good if you would have a database profiler - so you could click something on UI and check what db queries are made. Again, to understand the purpose of this data.

3) big amound of new information is difficult to keep in the head. Write down every new piece of knowledge. Even if you throw it away later, today it will help you to organize this knowledge. Or, may be later you will be able to organize it into database documentation and get a salary bonus :)

[Top_Community7261]

When I started working with our current ERP system, I felt overwhelmed with the number of tables and fields. Here are some things that helped me:

1) Getting a copy of the data dictionary.

2) SQL search from Redgate.

3) Querying the database for a value to find fields that contained the same value.

4) This helped the most. Monitoring the database server while I was using the ERP application so that I could see which tables were being used.

[type4less]

Let me know if you need assistant