05. Text: Map of SQL Content

Introduction

Throughout the next three lessons, you will be learning how to write Structured Query Language (SQL) to interact with a database here in the classroom. You will not need to download any software, and you will still be able to test your skills!

SQL is an extremely in demand skill. Tons of jobs use SQL, and in the next lessons you will be learning how to utilize SQL to analyze data and answer business questions.

Project

The skills you learn in the classroom are directly extendable to writing SQL in other environments outside this classroom. For the project at the end of these lessons, you will download a program that will allow you to write code on your local machine. You will then analyze and answer business questions using data associated with a music store by querying their database.

Lesson Outline

There are three lessons in this Nanodegree aimed at helping you understand how to write SQL queries. If you choose to take the Predictive Analytics Nanodegree or the Data Analyst Nanodegree programs, these three lessons will also be a part of these programs. However, there is also an additional lesson on Advanced SQL also taught by Derek!

The three lessons in this course aim at the following components of SQL:

• SQL Basics - Here you will get your first taste at how SQL works, and learn the basics of the SQL language. You will learn how to write code to interact with tables similar to the ones we analyzed in Excel earlier. Specifically, you will learn a little about databases, the basic syntax of SQL, and you will write your first queries!
  
  
• SQL Joins - In this lesson, you will learn the real power of SQL. You will learn about Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs), and how to join multiple tables together from a relational database. The power to join tables is what really moved companies to adopt this approach to holding data.
  
  
• SQL Aggregations - In this final lesson, you will learn some more advanced features of SQL. You will gain the ability to summarize data from multiple tables in a database.
  
  

At the end of these three lessons, you will be ready to tackle the project. The project aims to assure you have mastered these three topics, but you will also see some of the more advanced queries that were not covered in this course. These are just meant to introduce you to the advanced material, but don't feel discouraged if you didn't get these - they were beyond the scope of the class, and they are not required to pass the project!