Beginning SQL cont.

Post #10 Udemy MySQL bootcamp course

Continuing from the previous post, I got through most of The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp: Go from SQL Beginner to Expert. In the previous post, I went through some of the basic SQL commands on creating, inserting, and viewing data.

Other topics

• Logical operators -- these were similar to all python logical operators so easy to understand.
• Table relations by JOIN
  • One-to-Many -- one column in one table related to many columns in another table
  • Many-to-Many -- one table connecting at least two different tables together and acting as a bridge

Logical operators section had some functions that I hadn't seen in python like the BETWEEN operator and CASE statements (which are similar to if-else statements). Join tables was interesting to learn as the course used more real-world examples. For the one-to-many tables example, a customers table and orders table was created to show that a customer can have multiple orders, but a order can't usually have multple customers. I learned about FOREIGN KEY for creating these tables and I learned how to use INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, and RIGHT JOIN to print out info from two different tables. In the many-to-many tables example, I worked with a tv series data table and reviewers table that was connected by a reviews table. It was a code-along with exercises to print out specific outputs from the tables provided.

Finally, a instagram clone with very basic features was created with multiple tables (users, photos, comments, likes, followers, and hashtags) to do more exercises with JOIN. Exercises consisted of getting certain outputs like 'find the most liked photo and the user who posted it' and 'top 5 commonly used hashtags.'

I have not done the last 3 sections of this course since it is about making a webapp using Node.js. I don't know any javascript and I would still like to focus primarily on one programming language, python. I think I'll try doing the last few sections later after becoming more proficient in python or when I have more interest in front-end.

Verdict

The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp was a good introductory course in SQL. I did learn how to use SQL, but I wouldn't call myself a expert on it (definitely still a beginner), but I feel more confident about writing SQL code for datatables I may see in the future. I didn't feel like I learned about MySQL though. The set-up was already sort of taken care of by goormIDE and the only command I used was mysql-ctl cli. I think the last 3 sections with Node.js would've covered more on MySQL set-up and using it together with a different programming language. I still think this was a good $11-12 investment. The course was easy to understand and the exercises were helpful. I think I now know enough to branch out and look for how to use SQL with python.