About the Book

Real-world practice problems to bring your SQL skills to the next level
It's easy to find basic SQL syntax and keyword information online. What's hard to find is challenging, well-designed, real-world problems--the type of problems that come up all the time when you're dealing with data. Learning how to solve these problems will give you the skill and confidence to step up in your career.
With SQL Practice Problems, you can get that level of experience by solving sets of targeted problems. These aren't just problems designed to give an example of specific syntax, or keyword. These are the common problems you run into all the time when you deal with data.
You will get real world practice, with real world data. I'll teach you how to "think" in SQL, how to analyze data problems, figure out the fundamentals, and work towards a solution that you can be proud of. It contains challenging problems, that hone your ability to write high quality SQL code.
What do you get when you buy SQL Practice Problems?

• You get instructions on how set up MS SQL Server Express Edition 2016 and SQL Server Management Studio 2016, both free downloads. Almost all the SQL presented here works for previous versions of MS SQLServer, and any exceptions are highlighted.
• You'll also get a customized sample database, with video walk-through instructions on how to set it up on your computer.
• And of course, you get the actual practice problems - 57 problems that you work through step-by-step. There are targeted hints if you need them that help guide you through the question. For the more complex questions there are multiple levels of hints.
• Each answer comes with a short, targeted discussion section with alternative answers and tips on usage and good programming practice.

What kind of problems are there in SQL Practice Problems? SQL Practice Problems has data analysis and reporting oriented challenges that are designed to step you through introductory, intermediate and advanced SQL Select statements, with a learn-by-doing technique.
Most textbooks and courses have some practice problems. But most often, they're used just to illustrate a particular piece of syntax, with no filtering on what's most useful. What you'll get with SQL Practice Problems is the problems that illustrate some the most common challenges you'll run into with data, and the best, most useful techniques to solve them.
These practice problems involve only Select statements, used for data analysis and reporting, and not statements to modify data (insert, delete, update), or to create stored procedures.
About the author: Hi, my name is Sylvia Moestl Vasilik. I've been a database programmer and engineer for more than 15 years, working at top organizations like Expedia, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and the Gates Foundation.
In 2015, I was teaching a SQL Server Certificate course at the University of Washington Continuing Education. It was a 10 week course, and my students paid more than $1000 for it. My students learned the basics of SQL, most of the keywords, and worked through practice problems every week of the course.
But because of the emphasis on getting a broad overview of all features of SQL, we didn't spend enough time on the types of SQL that's used 95% of the time--intermediate and advanced Select statements. After the course was over, some of my students emailed me to ask where they could get more practice. That's when I was inspired to start work on this book.