I wrote in my last post about the lack of visual representation while learning SQL. Please, don’t just take my word for it. Let’s answer this question together, “What alternatives already exist?”
SQL: Visual QuickStart Guide and A Visual Introduction to SQL
These tactile solutions to learning SQL visually don’t appear at first glance to satisfy our want of developing an appreciation of the language. If the author or publisher will send me a copy, I would gladly write a review. In the meantime, by just going off the teaser images from Amazon and the description on the back cover, it appears as though the “visual” portion merely refers to screenshots (and not necessarily a play-by-play representation). Plus the latter book is around 13 years old as of this writing (that doesn’t necessarily preclude it from consideration, buy hey — in the tech world — A LOT has changed since then). Remember, titles don’t always tell the whole story. Case in point: my last title was Business Analyst, but not in the IT sense of the role…more like, “Here’s our business. Analyze it.”
JOIN Statements and Venn Diagrams
Back in the world wide web, one of Google’s top hits for “visual SQL” is a post from the Coding Horror blog. But it’s just a Venn diagram of various JOIN statements. My appreciation of Joins just became a little more clear. But what about the rest of the SQL puzzle?
Gamification
While I haven’t seen a Light-Bot for learning databases, Schemaverse may well be the closest thing out there (I smell a startup opportunity). I just created an account and I am 1 of 6 players online. Without going into too much detail, it isn’t quite as addictive as Light-Bot. Try it out for yourself. If you write a review, I’ll post it here for you as a guest contribution.
YouTube Tutorial
I swear I’ve seen it before, but I can’t find it at the time of this writing. It’s probably like a needle in a haystack with all the search results bearing “visual studio” in the title. I can only recall ever watching one video on YouTube that kinda-sorta did what I want to do, but in a very amateur and limited fashion. If you find it, get in touch with me.
Visual Queries
What I mean by learning SQL visually is not the same as building queries with a graphical user interface (GUI). You can do that all day in Access, and yes, even in SQL Server.
Life’s too short to reinvent the wheel — and since I’m also relatively new to SQL, if you’re aware of an alternative to my approach, then please drop me a line. If there exists a book, website, video, game, or what-have-you, I want to know about it.
Filter Funnel 