I've posted this before but I'll repost it here:

Now in terms of the question that you ask in the title - this is what I recommend:

Job Interview Prep

1. Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
   
2. Programming Interviews Exposed: Coding Your Way Through the Interview
   
3. Introduction to Algorithms
   
4. The Algorithm Design Manual
   
5. Effective Java
   
6. Concurrent Programming in Java™: Design Principles and Pattern
   
7. Modern Operating Systems
   
8. Programming Pearls
   
9. Discrete Mathematics for Computer Scientists
   
   

   Junior Software Engineer Reading List
   

   
   

   Read This First
   

   
   

10. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

11. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
    
12. Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
    
13. Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach
    
14. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
    
15. Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
    
16. Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing
    
17. Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application
    
    

    Understanding Professional Software Environments
    

    
    

18. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game
    
19. Software Project Survival Guide
    
20. The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
    
21. Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams
    
22. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules
    
23. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

24. Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
    
25. Against Method
    
26. The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
    
    

    History
    

    
    

27. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
    
28. Computing Calamities: Lessons Learned from Products, Projects, and Companies That Failed
    
29. The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management
    
    

    Mid Level Software Engineer Reading List
    

    
    

    Read This First
    

    
    

30. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

31. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
    
32. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
    
33. Solid Code
    
34. Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code
    
35. Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative
    
36. Writing Solid Code
    
    

    Software Design
    

    
    

37. Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide
    
38. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
    
39. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
    
40. Domain-Driven Design Distilled
    
41. Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
    
42. Design Patterns in C# - Even though this is specific to C# the pattern can be used in any OO language.
    
43. Refactoring to Patterns
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

44. Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems
    
45. Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Models, Frameworks, and Tools
    
46. NoEstimates: How To Measure Project Progress Without Estimating
    
47. Object-Oriented Software Construction
    
48. The Art of Software Testing
    
49. Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software
    
50. Working Effectively with Legacy Code
    
51. Test Driven Development: By Example
    
    

    Databases
    

    
    

52. Database System Concepts
    
53. Database Management Systems
    
54. Foundation for Object / Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto
    
55. Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design
    
56. Data Access Patterns: Database Interactions in Object-Oriented Applications
    
    

    User Experience
    

    
    

57. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
    
58. The Design of Everyday Things
    
59. Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
    
60. User Interface Design for Programmers
    
61. GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

62. The Productive Programmer
    
63. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
64. Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
    
65. Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
    
    

    History
    

    
    

66. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software
    
67. New Turning Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science
    
68. Hacker's Delight
    
69. The Alchemist
    
70. Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages
    
71. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    In spite of the fact that many of these won't apply to your specific job I still recommend reading them for the insight, they'll give you into programming language and technology design.
    
    

72. Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC
    
73. Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets
    
74. Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming
    
75. The C++ Programming Language
    
76. Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
77. More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
78. More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#
    
79. CLR via C#
    
80. Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java
    
81. Thinking in Java
    
82. JUnit in Action
    
83. Functional Programming in Scala
    
84. The Art of Prolog: Advanced Programming Techniques
    
85. The Craft of Prolog
    
86. Programming Perl: Unmatched Power for Text Processing and Scripting
    
87. Dive into Python 3
    
88. why's (poignant) guide to Ruby

I got my start by taking AP CS in high school. However, I had already gone to college and that was a while ago, so I read some books on the commute to/from work.

Initially, I read Sams Teach Yourself PHP, Mysql and Apache all in one to learn PHP.

Immediately afterward, I read Murach's Java Se 6 and Beginning Java Objects to learn Java.

Most recently, I read a portion of C++ Primer Plus, but got very sick of it. I've read most of Accelerated C++

I have a few other books on C# to read when the time comes to actually write code.

By the time I had read all of the above, I felt pretty confident on how to structure a program, regardless of language. As such, I was able to pick up Python and JavaScript quite easily just by reading online documentation at Python.org and W3Schools. When I'm writing a web app, I'll rely pretty heavily on PHP's and MySQL's online documentation to help me with whatever syntax quibbles I may have.

I still want to read Game Coding Complete and I'll probably want to find a few resources on programming within XCode.

They all tend to follow the same programming paradigms, to be honest. Java did a good job in getting me into an OOP mindset and C/C++ did a good job at helping me think about how to program things without layer of abstraction. Once I learned these concepts, it was pretty easy to get started with a new language. Programming in PHP can be super sloppy, but taking what I learned from other languages, I'm usually able to write fairly clean code in PHP (especially when I learned how to use classes).

I wouldn't recommend all of the books above, to be honest. I didn't have much ability to do online training at the time and compiled lists of books weren't nearly as useful at the time, so I relied mostly on Amazon book reviews. I'm sure you can find a few choice books on each language you want to learn and go that way. If you were to read books, I think Accelerated C++ is a good book, but works best if you already have some experience programming. I remember like Beginning Java Objects more than Murach's, though both are great as references (which is why they're both still in my bookshelf). C++ Primer Plus spends too much time teaching C and not enough time teaching C++ (you spend pages upon pages learning about C-style strings, aka char arrays, rather than just using the String Class, but I digress).

Ultimately, I could read a bunch about a language, but I never truly learned the language until I started writing in it. I've written a handful of programs just as proofs of concepts and I recommend you do the same while learning any language.

The Stanford Algorithm book is complete overkill in my opinion do NOT read that book. That's insane. Read it when you've been doing programming for a while and have a grasp of how it even applies.

Here's my list, it's a "wanna be a decent junior" list:

• Computer Science Distilled
  
• Java/ C# / PHP/ JS (pick one)
  
• Do some Programming Challenges
  
• SQL
  
• Maybe build a small web app. Don't worry about structure so much, just build something simple.
  
• Applying UML: and Patterns: An Introduction to Object Oriented Anaysis and Design Iterative Development
  
• Head First Design Patterns
  
• Clean Architecture
  
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
  
• If you're interested in Web
  
• Soft Skills: Power of Habit , A Mind for Numbers , Productivity Project
  
  ​
  
  Reasoning: So, the first book is to give you a sense of all that's out there. It's short and sweet and primes you for what's ahead. It helps you understand most of the basic industry buzz words and whatnot. It answers a lot of unknown unknowns for a newbie.
  
  Next is just a list languages off the top of my head. But you can pick anything, seriously it's not a big deal. I did put Java first because that's the most popular and you'll like find a mountain of resources.
  
  Then after some focused practice, I suggest grabbing some SQL. You don't need to be an expert but you gotta know about DBs to some degree.
  
  Then I put an analysis book that's OOP focused. The nifty thing about that book, is it breaks into design patterns nicely with some very simple design patters to introduce you to design patterns and GRASP.
  
  Then I put in a legit Design Patterns book that explains and explores design patterns and principles associated with many of them.
  
  Now that you know how code is structured, you're ready for a conversation about Architecture. Clean architecture is a simple primer on the topic. Nothing too crazy, just preps you for the idea of architecture and dealing with it.
  
  Finally, refactoring is great for working devs. Often your early work will be focused on working with legacy code. Then knowing how to deal with those problems can be helpful.
  
  FINAL NOTE: Read the soft skills books first.
  
  The reason for reading the soft skills books first is it helps develop a mental framework for learning all the stuff.
  
  Good luck! I get this isn't strictly computer science and it's likely focused more toward Software Development. But I hope it helps. If it doesn't. My apologies.

Whelp, believe what you want but some studies have shown that by believing [certain group] are better at a given mental task you will, on average, perform worse at it, even if you are part of [certain group].

Anyways - SQL isn't like many other programming languages. It changes very slowly. So an 'outdated' resource is about 95% as good as a 'modern' one. If I was learning from scratch I'd start off by downloading & installing MySQL + MySQL workbench. You'll want to learn and understand relational databases so you should watch this course by Richard Schneeman. It's fantastic and while it is oriented toward Ruby on Rails it's a great introduction.

Once you've got the basic theory under your belt it's time to dive in with a bit of practice. Head over to sqlzoo and run through the exercises. If you get stuck search google / stackoverflow for answers. Don't just copy & paste. Try and understand what you're doing!

Take good notes, it will help you remember things later on.

After you've done all this, and you feel confident that you like the work go to Udemy / Udacity and search for a few courses in things you're interested in. I'd try out the courses in the data scientist track on Udacity. You can view them for free, and if you pay some money you can get a certification (though how much its worth is still up in the air).

Ok - now time to really step it up. Go to codewars and work your way to at least 5kyu in SQL. It's technically Postgres, not MySQL - but the core concepts are the same. Read through "Thinking in Sets". Again - take notes! You want to remember this stuff.

Finally practice building a few databases of your own using workbench. Once you've got that down, practice building them using the command line. Now you're ready for a basic job using SQL :)

good luck!

Nothing wrong with piggybacking! Us coders know how pointless it is to reinvent the wheel (but that doesn't stop our egos from trying, though :p). I think your plan is a great way to approach the project. Get something truly solid working first, then step it up from there.

Since you mentioned you are interested in programming (high five!), there are a couple of books that I can mention that are good for beginners:

The Head First series are great because they explain programming in a very direct and simple language and are example driven.

There is a web site called CSS Zen Garden which demonstrates the true power of Cascading Style Sheets. This website offers users strictly content (text) and then demonstrates the incredibly different ways programmers have styled the content using only CSS. Pretty cool. The Missing Manual series is also nice to have because they do a great job of simplifying advanced concepts and are a nice go-to guide when you are forgetting something that you KNOW is really simple...

Since you mention PHP (vs. ASP.NET), a great PHP book that combines with the MySQL database (yes, you will have to learn databases at some point. I apologize in advance) is Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL. It is a no frills reference and finishes off with advanced projects that may help you towards your end goals.

And if you are a learner who likes clear cut, non-cutesy text, the O'Reilly series are pretty much up your alley. (They are the texts with a white cover with an animal of some sort. You'll know it when you see it.)

Commence information overload. Welcome to a programmers life. :)

software developer here. I use sql every day and its an integral part of the majority of the software i work on. That said i would NOT recommend w3schools for sql. w3schools is a great "reference" site for html,css, and sometimes javascript. Meaning it has a lot of information but isn't the best place to learn sql but a good resource once you know it. also w3schools has slowly but surely fallen behind its former glory.

I'd recomend picking up one or more books off amazon. With sql its important to have a database set up to help you learn. if you already do i'd go with: http://www.amazon.com/SQL-Nutshell-OReilly-Kevin-Kline/dp/0596518846/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1318654308&sr=8-16. O'reilly makes a large number of computer language related books and its going to take you step by step through learning sql. If you don't have a database set up already and are not sure where to begin then go with: http://www.amazon.com/Language-SQL-Access-Relational-Databases/dp/143545751X/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1318654308&sr=8-12. the first chapter(s) are devoted to installing and setting up either Microsoft Sql Server or MySql (and maybe oracle sql developer too) the three most popular database systems used. then its going to walk you threw, step by step, the one you choose.

I'll add im not an actuary so i cant make to many assumptions on what you already know and what you don't but as a software developer find some hands on resources to teach you is definitely what i'd recommend, and there are lots of good and cheep books on amazon to help you do that.

Lastly you may want to post this question on r/programming or r/sql or something like that explaining your situation and they might have even better recommendations.

If these items are unique to a single user (that is, one user has many items; one item belongs to exactly one user) then I think what you're doing sounds good. ItemID would be your primary key (since it alone uniquely identifies the record), and UserID would be a foreign key reference to your Users table. You'll definitely want an index on UserID since it sounds like the vast majority of queries would be able to make use of it.

There's no reason that shouldn't perform well up to a fair number of records (the amount will depend on lots of other factors, but a few million rows is maybe a good first guess). If/when you do run into speed issues, you can look at partitioning the table, which would allow you to have something that behaves as if it was one big table, but is actually made up of a number of smaller tables under the hood. It's a little more work, and there are a few snags to watch out for, but it can be really helpful when you need it. And it's not something you need to start out with -- you can add it on later if/when you find you need it. Take a look at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/ddl-partitioning.html for some more information.

That said, while you can make some educated guesses about indexing/partitioning strategies, really the only way to know for sure is to analyze how it behaves in practice. Query performance is pretty dependent on things like the data itself, usage patterns, and server configuration. You can try loading up a lot of data (just generate so fake data if you need to), and analyze some of your expected queries -- that should give you a better glimpse of what is going on. Take a look at the docs for the EXPLAIN command to get started on that. http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/using-explain.html

Lastly, I think the Douglas book on PostgreSQL might be helpful, if you wanted to read up on this some. http://www.amazon.com/PostgreSQL-2nd-Korry-Douglas/dp/0672327562 It has some general information about performance topics, as well as a lot of specifics about how these things work in PostgreSQL.

Hope that helps a bit :)

(Edit: my grammar is atrocious :()

Welcome to the DBA club! Administrating both Oracle and SQL Server is quite the learning curve - good luck, and remember that being conservative is always the best bet until you're familiar with the platform you're on. Just don't lose any data, and you'll be fine :)

I haven't read any SQL Administration books for quite a while, but I've heard nothing but good things about Rod Colledge's book SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action, and Rod's a great, genuine guy as well.

Here's an interview with Rod discussing the book, and provides links to a couple of sample chapters.

SQL Server Books Online (the manual) is fantastic (always, always install it!), and, other than the SQL Server Internals series and quick Google searches, the only resource I use day-to-day (mostly because I'm guaranteed to have access to it, no matter where I am).

I recommend using the local version of Books Online. The web version is great if you want to search it via Google.

The only other resource I can suggest is a good mentor. If you have an experienced DBA at work, try and soak up anything they can tell you. If not, I highly recommend you find one, locally (at a user group or SQL Saturday), or online.

Hey hey, maybe a little late but wanted to post my experience as I started in my current position with very little sql experience and was able to ramp up quickly.

I started with the Harvard online courses on databases, it’s free. The biggest help I found was this book on Amazon: SQL: Visual QuickStart Guide (Visual QuickStart Guides). You should be able to find this for less than the 40 bucks, but still a good investment regardless.

Understand that types of SQL vary but are all inherently similar. I use Teradata, Oracle and SQL Server pretty much daily.

For certification, I’d recommend any of the Microsoft certificates, MCSE. Personally I’m working towards the Data Information and Analytics as its the best fit for me.

> What they give you is pretty limited though... not nullable, foreign key references, uniqueness... What would be really more valuable is along the lines of the example I gave end of last comment, or restricting dates to be on a certain day of the week, or numbers to a certain range, etc etc.

Errr, there's the very generic CHECK constraint that lets you use Boolean expressions and I believe support everything you mention above out of the box (except for MySQL of course). Here's the PostgreSQL reference page on them, and here's an example of a constraint I used in my last project to make sure all the times stored in the database were in the same time zone:

ALTER TABLE time_slots
ADD CONSTRAINT time_slots_check_slot_time
CHECK (EXTRACT (TIMEZONE FROM slot_time) = '0')

You can do a lot more, as well as call stored procedures for calculations that are not built in. Of course, you have to write those procedures first :-)

> You mentioned something you did 94-96... which was right when I started high school. Think there is actually a bit of a generational gap on this LOL.

Yes, I do believe there is :-) I started programming in my junior year in high school, punched card FORTRAN "IV" on an IBM 1130 in 1978. Scare quotes because that dialect didn't have logical IF statements, each IF would GOTO another line, based on the result being negative, 0, or positive.... Trust me, except for the educational value, the aesthetics of handling card decks and feeding them into the card hopper etc., you didn't miss much. Sent me straight to the library to read up on software engineering.

> I don't really have an issue with using the constraints provided by an RDBMS... I just think they are woefully insufficient and that that logic should exist primarily in the main application code.

Here we should just agree to disagree, this is a fundamental and highly contested architectural issue, neither of us is "wrong", we each think a different choice is better.

> Another big part of that is I don't want an app too closely coupled to the choice of database, regardless of what it is.

That's not terribly hard to arrange, you've just got to have the self-discipline to use generic SQL, data types (or easily interchangeable ones, you've got all sorts of levels of isolation available), etc. I.e. I generally use this reference first, before getting database specific, and make note of the database specific features I use. Of course, I really try to limit the choices to solid MVCC ones, i.e. Oracle and PostgreSQL.

> (Although the comeback to that is of course SQLite).

Of course, although I've worked on a system that used the Sleepycat version of the Berkeley DB key/value database but didn't do much with that part of it, and as I mentioned before in less detail, incorporated a SQLite like single client object database called directly from C++ in a greenfield project I was the architect and primary developer of. I'm by no means dogmatic about this, I just have my preferences for complicated interrelated data.

Binary assets will depend on the database, I suppose, they've generally got a blob data type, but I've never used a RDBMS with blobs of any great size (4K or less if I remember correctly). Have never done geocoordinate data, did an interview for a job doing that, I know that's a specialty and would likely use a purpose built database for it, or I've heard PostgreSQL has an ... addon? that's supposed to be hot.

> But arguably the Mongo document model is better since read/write speed is much more paramount over making sure each and every metrics record was written OK.

"metrics record"? Note that except for perhaps one data warehouse application where I suppose loss of a few rows could have been tolerated (but that wouldn't come up except in ETL failure), it was imperative that the data was treated with ACID care.

My blog is advertised on my stack overflow account and github, all three are circular and refer to each other. I've kept my reddit account separate on purpose for identifiable reasons.

I'm still toying with the idea of posting occasional blog posts or creating a reddit account to link to my other social medias to help build a base. At the moment, the blog is really intended for employers and myself and it is not based on trying to accumulate or direct web traffic.

So while I'm happy to share my information, I don't want to link it from this account.

> It's incredibly generous and secure of you to actually share your notes and progress.

The notes are usually pretty barebones. Here's an example of the kind of information in my google sheet:

5/22/18

• Read SQL Server Pro Internals
  
  • PG 200-240
    
• Worked on Stairway to XML Series on SQL Central
  
  • Stairways 3 and 4
    
    5/23/18
    
• Read Exam Ref 70-762 Developing SQL Databases
  
  • PG 300-324 (Need to find additional articles on temporal tables.)
    
• Temporal Database practice
  
  • 40 minutes in World Wide Importers
    
    Then if I have done any work / notations, I add them to a folder and upload them to my github.
    
    If you are interested in other examples of how I did things, let me know specifically and I can get you a scrubbed / masked version. Here's my list of recommended resources that appears in my 762 study guide though:
    
    Exam 70-762
    
    Exam policies and FAQ
    
    Course 20762B: Developing SQL Databases
    
    https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/4690/study-materials-for-developing-sql-databases-exam-70762/
    
    https://www.amazon.com/T-SQL-Fundamentals-3rd-Itzik-Ben-Gan/dp/150930200X
    
    https://www.amazon.com/T-SQL-Querying-Developer-Reference-Ben-Gan/dp/0735685045/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0/138-3143892-2208566?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=E5CA9HQ5WEXP7RPBE1B1
    
    https://www.amazon.com/Pro-Server-Internals-Dmitri-Korotkevitch/dp/1484219635/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520887778&sr=1-1&keywords=sql+server+internal+pro

There are all sorts of resources as you have found out. I see you say 'GUI based database app' - are you talking about a desktop application or a web application? I would recommend a web interface as it is cross-platform and doesn't require install/local database/etc. Right now the newest thing (and easiest IMO) is Asp.NET MVC: http://www.asp.net/mvc I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-MVC-Framework-Second/dp/1430228865/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278940788&sr=1-3 (I did not read this edition, but the 1.0 edition).

You don't necessarily have to use LINQ, you can use older ADO, stored procedures, or any combination of the above, but in my opinion, LINQ-to-SQL is the easiest to work with. This is the first explanation I read of it back in the day, and it was easy to understand and got me underway: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/01/07/dynamic-linq-part-1-using-the-linq-dynamic-query-library.aspx
There are also some good video tutorials here under the 'data' section:http://www.asp.net/web-forms
I also really liked this book when learning: http://www.amazon.com/LINQ-Action-Fabrice-Marguerie/dp/1933988169/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278941155&sr=1-1

As a shameless plug, I also have a video course on learning how to do this at http://c-sharpener.com - but that is Asp.Net WebForms and not MVC (just another way of doing it).

If you have any more specific questions, please ask! I hope I made some sort of coherent sense?!

If you're talking about a publicly available dataset, it will probably be in a delimited format, like .csv or .tsv. Go get MySQL or even the Microsoft SQL Server free version and then you'll just import your dataset into your server and then you can start querying. It's been a while since I've looked, but you might still be able to pick up a free copy of AdventureWorks here, which is a nice starter database w/ several tables so you can figure out how joins work. As for books, I like the Murach books. A nice one for conceptual stuff (first few chapters) is The Art of SQL

You sound like you'd like to become a Data Scientist. :)

For SQL take a look at Beginning SQL Queries: From Novice to Professional. It's a very good (text) book. You'll be amazed how easy SQL is with the right mindset.

Let me clarify a little. It's helpful to find books that I can digest from the ground up on and compare with current standards or use creatively. Simple put I enjoy doing the homework on a book. What I am look to accomplish is to write SQL Queries for corporate finances and manufacturing. Working in the environment I am in currently allows me the opportunity to learn and practice it.


Here are a few I looked into:

https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Minutes-Sams-Teach-Yourself/dp/0672336073/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1519240184&sr=8-4&keywords=beginning+SQL

https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Beginners-Learning-Programming-Course/dp/1532716958/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1519240184&sr=8-14&keywords=beginning+SQL


https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Practice-Problems-learn-doing/dp/1520807635/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1519239367&sr=8-7&keywords=beginning+SQL

Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World (Sixth Edition) <-- this was the version required for a class

Seventh Edition(?)

This book is free from any programming languages and is instead supposed to aide the development of thinking and planning applications.

murach's SQL Server 2012 for developers <-- required for class

murach's SQL Server 2016

Uses SQL to further enforce "forms" for application data structures.

Professional Test Driven Development with C#: Developing Real World Applications with TDD

Book I purchased during my 4000 project class. Team based project where we had to

1. To plan out the application using skills from System Analysis and Design.
   
   
2. Create a presentation to show to a client.
   
   
3. Create a manual to help onboard developers.
   
   
4. Create a manual for clients.
   
   
5. design and deploy a database (database schematic included in onboarding manual).
   
6. Write tests for the application.
   
   
7. Deploy the application to Azure.
   
   After my research at the time, this book seemed to be the most appropriate for my scenario.
   
   

Granted this was a long time ago (circa 2005) but I learned by reading PHP and MySQL Web Development. Cover still looks the same as it did back then: https://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Development-Developers-Library/dp/0321833899/ref=asc_df_0321833899/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312125971120&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16526201816409799004&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008452&hvtargid=pla-434745475082&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316180839&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312125971120&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16526201816409799004&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008452&hvtargid=pla-434745475082

I got mine from the library. I'd browse your library for some books, check out a few, and see what works for you. I only ended up reading half the book. But for that half, I did all the exercises. From there I began building the ideas I had been dreaming of. Not a lot of good code in those early years, but thats part of learning. It definitely gave me a good basis. Before reading that I only had basic programming understanding like if statements and variables, didn't even understand loops or arrays.

I can't recommend your local library enough. Don't buy a book from Amazon or Barnes and Nobles that might just collect dust. If they don't have anything good then buy.

I’d have to say these were a great combo in my SQL class last year:

SQL Queries For Mere Mortals

and

Murach’s MySQL

Jon Duckett also has a MySQL & PHP book coming out next month that I’m looking forward to. Loved his books on HTML/CSS and Javascript/JQuery

PHP & MySQL: Server Side Web Development

http://www.amazon.com/Murachs-Server-2008-Developers-Murach/dp/1890774510/

I learned SQL from an earlier version of this book. I thought it was good and was useful as a reference later on. It had the lesson on the left then the example on the right.

Edit: A five year old sql book is still relevant when talking about the majority of sql. Not much has changed really besides adding a couple more advanced features to the servers. All the select, delete, update, table, procedure, function, create, etc stuff will all be the same.

This is the best book to learn SQL properly: Beginning SQL Queries: From Novice to Professional

The important part is to run the examples yourself and play with it. Make up your own queries and figure out how to get them to work. That's what you'll be doing all the time anyway.

After that, pick any of the books for your DB vendors SQL dialect. But first, get the fundamentals right.

Your code doesn't sound that bad. I once updated a series of reports (ie, vendor report, services report, etc.) that the previous guy made internally consistent by re-running the entire original base report (including select) in every other report because they were timing out. I honestly still wasn't too mad at him because he'd turned it from a 20+ step access db job into reports through SSRS.

I would focus on what you've identified.

For grouping, go through hackerrank's aggregation - https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/sql?filters%5Bsubdomains%5D%5B%5D=aggregation and/or Itzik Ben-Gan's TSQL Querying books chapter on grouping.

Having is a filter (where clause) that's applied after the data is grouped. You might group together orders by customer and filter out customers whose max order-date is more than a year ago. Most of my aggregate or grouped queries don't have a 'having' clause.

For performance, I you might look at some of your longest running reports and re-factor them using the execution plan, etc. Itzik's https://www.amazon.com/T-SQL-Querying-Developer-Reference-Ben-Gan/dp/0735685045/ has a chapter on query tuning. I'm not personally great at it because I don't use it a lot.

I have this book, it's pretty thorough: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0672327562/

Ofcourse you should also study the Postgres official docs, at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/

I don't know any books on database design or theory, does anyone have good tips?

Another accountant to BI person...

I found Khan Academy's Intro to SQL course useful and it's what I'd make my associates run through. Additionally, SQL Visual Start Guide was and continues to be a useful reference book.

I'm not sure what the policy is on promoting your own work, but I wrote a book titled "SQL Practice Problems", specifically to help with this problem. People came to me regularly and asked how to get more real-world practice using SQL, and I finally decided to write this book.

[SQL Practice Problems: 57 beginning, intermediate, and advanced challenges for you to solve using a “learn-by-doing” approach] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520807635)

Re-iterating what the previous posters said: the fundamentals are the same regardless of system. Learning how to get data out of a SQL system is all about learning how to write SQL.

To effectively learn how to write SQL for data engineering, I highly recommend grabbing a book like one of these*:

1. SQL Quickstart Guide
   
2. SQL Queries
   
3. If you're an experience programmer maybe T-SQL Fundamentals (Microsoft flavor SQL)
   
   and grabbing a sample database for the system of your choice:
   
   
4. MySQL sample Employee db
   
5. PostgreSQL sample dbs
   
6. SQL Server - stackoverflow db
   
   and then practice some of your chosen book on the sample db.
   
   Notes and words of warning:
   
   

• Writing SQL for data engineering or programming is really different than "database administration." A lot of resources on the web are geared towards DBAs and it probably won't help you out much.
  
• University courses on databases tend to be more theoretical than practical, for the sake of learning how to write SQL. University isn't a super efficient method of learning to write SQL.
  
  ^((*I'm not affiliated w/ any of those books))

If you want a really in depth of how they work, go to Amazon and find yourself an internals book. I think that a good used SQL Server 2008 Internals book is still relevant.

PHP: The Right Way is an excellent option.

Another one is PHP & MySQL (https://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Development-Developers-Library/dp/0321833899) It has just been updated to the 5th Edition.

I recommend this one for people new to SQL. It's good to learn from and keep as a reference manual.

SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL (4th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134858336/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_DbC4CbV7QTS0Y

I quite liked Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages

I used Murach's SQL Server book to learn SQL. It's honestly the best technical book I have ever read. I also had trouble learning SQL but this book got me over the hump.

I'd recommend first, the Inside SQL Server Series mentioned above. Also I'd recommend the Guru's guide to Transact-SQL. I found it really enhanced my skills in T-SQL over the years. I'd run into some difficult problem only to think 'hey, the guru's guide had something on this....'. I tried to re-read it every year. Also, lots of good code samples.

This is great, but a little dense as a beginner

T-SQL Querying (Developer Reference (Paperback)) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0735685045/

This was my first SQL book, and it was really well done for beginners.

Assuming MSSQL, two quick book tips:

https://www.amazon.de/T-SQL-Querying-Developer-Reference-Paperback/dp/0735685045

https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/t-sql-window-functions-for-data-analysis-and-beyond-9780135861448

The 5th edition is the most recent, I believe, which covers up to PHP 7.

older version, but concepts hold over: https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Server-2008-Administration-Action/dp/193398872X

Archives for the links in comments:

• By GeorgeClooneysToupee (johannes-bauer.com): http://archive.is/pXsxq
  
• By kgoblin2 (en.wikipedia.org): http://archive.is/jbFyS
  
• By hga_another (en.wikipedia.org): http://archive.is/dkgD5
  
  
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• By kgoblin2 (en.wikipedia.org): http://archive.is/kIBhj
  
• By hga_another (postgresql.org): http://archive.is/j5dyv
  
  
• By hga_another (en.wikipedia.org): http://archive.is/4lAyG
  
  
• By hga_another (amazon.com): http://archive.is/O8Sgg
  
• By kgoblin2 (martin.kleppmann.com): http://archive.is/JprXW
  
• By Bainge (standard.net): http://archive.is/mruMw
  
  ----
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I started with this book: SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL (4th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134858336/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_UIWLBbJZF1KBH

It’s very through but a bit slow at the start. I go back and reference it from time to time still.

> I disagree. Structured Query Language.

Okay so I want to ask you guys something that has always bothered me.

According to SQL: Visual QuickStart Guide (I had to use it in my one SQL class I took ages ago), it states this:


> Not an Acronym. It's a common misconception that SQL stands for structured query language; it stands for SQL and nothing else. Why? Because ANSI says so. The official name is Database Language SQL. . . . This is the worst possible description, because SQL:

> Isn't structured (because it can't be broken down into blocks or procedures)

> Isn't for only queries (because it has more than just the SELECT statement).

> * Isn't a language (because it's not Turing-complete . . .)

Anyway, I haven't used SQL in ages and don't care, but I was wondering if anyone knew if the book is correct or not . .