Data analysis and presentation is one of the most in-demand job skills right now. Knowing SQL syntaxes and applying them to the real world problems will give you advantage in your career.

Whether you are going to start a new job, or you are a database administrator, developer of web or mobile applications, or you are engaged in a similar business applications role, a good understanding of SQL is essential for communicating with modern database systems. The point is that, if you are working with data, you definitely need to know SQL.

There are plenty of resources regarding SQL syntaxes, but it is difficult to find resources that shows how to apply these syntaxes for solving real world business problems. This book is filling this gap.

This book is for anyone who has little to no knowledge about databases or SQL and would like to become an expert in it. The lessons and practice scenarios in this book are designed to teach a total beginner how to build a complete database from scratch using SQL. For those of you who are not novices, we recommend this book as a valuable resource for:

• Application developers who want to learn how to write SQL on their own rather than rely on a database developer to do it for them
• Application developers who want to become a solution designer/architect by becoming proficient in database design and SQL
• Data analysts, data architects, report analysts or report developers who have to answer a lot of business questions and want to use SQL to answer those questions
• Application users who want to go the extra mile and find answers to their own questions using SQL
• Anyone who is an expert in one database tool and wants to become an expert in another database tool
• Business users or project managers who would like to know how to talk to technical people (such as those mentioned above)
• Anyone who can write SQL but doesn't know how to design a database from a business case

In short, if you want to take a more active role in how your database powers your business, the SQL skills taught in this book will give you an advantage in your career.

You will learn how to:

• Create data model for your business
• Convert data model into physical database
• Insert, update and delete data
• Solve real world problems related to data
• Recover your data from disaster

1. A Basic Vocabulary of Database Design & SQL
2. The E-commerce Site Case Study
3. Installing SQL Tools
4. Converting a logical data model into a physical database
5. Manipulating Data
6. Retrieving Static Data without a Table
7. Retrieving All Rows from a Table
8. Retrieving subset of rows from a table
9. Summarizing Retrieved Rows from a Table
10. Retrieving and Summarizing Data from Multiple Tables Using Inner Join
11. Retrieving and summarizing data from multiple tables using Outer Join
12. Retrieving and Summarizing Data from Multiple Tables Using UNION
13. Working with Views
14. Comparing Data Between Rows Within the Same Table or Result Set Using Self-Join
15. Working with Flow-control Statements
16. Working with Stored Procedures
17. Working with Triggers
18. Improving query performance using indexes
19. Backing up and restoring a database
20. Appendix A Solutions to the Practice Business Problems