Top 6 Tools That Help You to Learn SQL Easily

SQL is everywhere, so it makes perfect sense to learn it to get a good job in software development. Many big companies use it, including Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Twitter, Spotify, Instagram, and Dropbox, so knowing how to use SQL can open amazing career opportunities.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of professional developers have this skill. In fact, the results of the recent Developer Survey suggested that SQL was in the top 5 most popular technologies among professional developers in 2018.

If you’re reading this, chances are that you’d like to join them, and learn how to communicate with relational databases through SQL. In this article, you’re going to find six excellent resources and tools to help you with that.

SQL Easy

SQL Easy is a good resource for anyone looking to learn SQL from scratch or improve their knowledge. The website offers to start with learning each of the language’s most common commands; every lesson contains easy-to-follow instructions on the basics of the commands. To allow the learner to practice the knowledge, the website has the SQL Interpreter where you can enter commands and get feedback in one click.

Each lesson is concise and offers the most essential information one needs to know to start learning SQL on their own, that’s why this tool is often recommended for absolute beginners.

SQL Tutorial for Beginners: Learn SQL in 7 Days

This training course comes from a well-known resource and teaches database design to beginners. It starts with an introduction to database fundamentals, design, and MySQL and guides the learner to SQL basics and commands, thus ensuring that you know a good deal about databases before you start getting to know SQL.

Each tutorial is a bit more complex than the ones we found at SQL Easy, but nevertheless, they’re pretty straightforward and easy to follow. At the beginning of the tutorials, you’ll find the main goals of the lesson as well as the outline with all the steps to reach them. The tasks are described in a reader-friendly manner; for example, there are lots of bullet points and visuals (images and screenshots), which also helps with understanding the material.

The course promises to teach you SQL basics in seven days, which is pretty good for those who’d like to learn fast.

Learn SQL from Codecademy

Codecademy is a well-known source of programming courses, and Lean SQL is one of them. According to the website, it takes about 7 hours to complete it even without prior knowledge of the subject, so it’s a great option for beginners, too.

There are four main sections – or the so-called interactive lessons –  in the course: manipulation, queries, aggregate functions, and multiple tables. In addition to lessons, the learners have access to four test projects where they’ll face tasks on data manipulation and query building.

“Also note that you need to upgrade your Codecademy account to premium to access a lot of features within the course,” says Kyle Olsen, a reviewer of online courses from TrustMyPaper. “These include exclusive quizzes, extra practice content, portfolio-ready projects, and community support.”

Another feature that you should definitely take a look at this site is the List of SQL Commands. The name pretty much says it all: it’s an appendix of the most commonly used commands in the language that can be useful in case you’d like to learn with examples or refresh your memory. Each command also comes with a brief explanation for your convenience.

SQLCourse

Here, you’ll find interactive SQL training materials, including lessons and an online SQL interpreter to test the use of commands at the end of each training session. With SQLCourse, you’ll learn the following:

• SQL and table essentials
• Creating tables
• Inserting data into a table
• Deleting and updating records
• Dropping a table
• Advanced queries.

The instructions are given in a simple and concise manner, so a person without SQL experience should be able to learn quickly and effectively.

The course also provides answers to exercises in case you would like to check your answers and perfect your skills.

SQL Tutorial from W3Schools

W3Schools is another well-known source of coding knowledge, so it’s no surprise that they have a vast section dedicated to SQL. In this section, you’ll find a lot of materials on SQL essentials as well as advanced commands, so both beginners and people with some SQL knowledge will find something useful.

For example, in addition to the introduction to SQL, W3Schools also provides:

• examples with explanations so you can learn the code more easily
• SQL quiz test to find out your skill level (25 questions without any time limits)
• SQL data types description
• Detailed descriptions of essential and advanced queries with clarifying explanations.
• SQL references: keywords, data types, operators, access functions, and SQL server functions.

The section with the examples is one of the most interesting, as it can help to understand more complex structures. Beginner users should definitely check it out, too, because even if they can proofread their resume with tools like GrabMyEssay and Grammarly, they have only themselves to rely on with complex codes.

This website can easily be your go-to source for learning SQL, as you can start from scratch and learn the basics pretty fast with straightforward instructions and tests.

SQLZOO

Another good source to learn SQL quickly if you prefer a systematic, step-by-step approach. SQLZOO is a collection of straightforward lessons on SQL essentials and commands, references, quizzes, and assessments for checking the new knowledge. Like many of the tools before, it comes with an online SQL interpreter so the user could check the accuracy of the code instantly.

Each lesson comes with a quick practice session to test the new knowledge, which is a cool feature that facilitates quick learning.

Another useful feature is the assessments. The learner is given a scenario based on which they will have to perform easy, medium, and hard level commands (the choice of the level is available). For example, for the medium-level Guest House scenario, you’ll have to perform tasks as:

• Show the total payable amount by a specific guest
• Calculate the total bill for a specific booking
• Show the total number of booked nights from people residing in the location
• Show the booking made on a specific day and a week after that.

Each of these tasks comes with an online command interpreter and result generator, so working with them would be an easy and enjoyable experience. Since there are three levels of complexity available for each scenario – easy, medium, and hard – you can start training yourself with easy tasks and gradually move to the hard level.

It’s Learning Time

Learning the basics of SQL is simple and easy with the tools listed above, so hopefully, you’ll find an option that perfectly suits your needs. Teaching yourself SQL is certainly a good idea, as the language remains very popular among developers and employers. Many experts suggest that SQL won’t lose its relevance for a very long period of time, so adding it to your list of skills is a good way to develop as a programmer.