Why understanding SQL should be a prerequisite before we learn to code
Transitioning away from IT for the past seven years, I used SQL queries to access data from a given database. Excel, Access, MongoDB, AzureDb, are all databases that companies utilizes to store data. Data, is the foundation of a company. Working in IT, I’ve created databases to track users and their laptops/desktops. The database contained Fname, Lname, StartDate, MachineType, Location. This was used to better support our users as well for upgrading a user machine after x amount of years. Understanding how to run sql queries should be taught after learning about Github.
As a software engineer, database is the core of company data. How data is stored and access is very important to understand and know how to access. As an engineer, manual work is not the answer. If we have data of over 100 items, I do not want to read each item. Automation is key and writing queries will save us a lot of time.
Building relationships between tables can also save us a lot of work. We can build a relationship taking data from different tables to create a new table that we can use to provide information that was once not possible.
Interviews also consist of questions asking to navigate around SQL. An example is to define what inner join does.
The INNER JOIN keyword selects records that have matching values in both tables.
https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_syntax.asp has a great documentation on powerful syntax we can use when working with databases.
The reason for this article is to show readers the importance of SQL and being able to navigate around it. It is extremely useful.
