Over all the SQL screen casts covered a lot of ground but there were some gaps that I think would be very useful to cover in an introduction to SQL. One thing I use semi-frequently with SQL queries is AS, granting the ability to name result columns, particularly useful with aggregate functions (ex: select sum(Hours) as total_hours from Experiment). Talking about the ‘;’ to delineate queries, they show up occassionally in the queries demoed but are never talked about explicitly.
I felt like the introduction could be strengthened by showing some SQL while describing the types of queries and giving a description of relational databases (outside just a floating ‘structured’), relational databases model relationships between entities; from the example A researcher has several experiments. Also coving a bit more about how there are different dialects of SQL and how the functions available will differ between database implementations. Finally a discussion of datatypes explicitly, it’s talked around when referring to NULL values but never directly addressed.
MISC notes:
Databases Intro
black screen at ~2:15
Fast pacing
Sorting
started using tab completion
string lower case sorts before upper case (ie insulin doesn’t sort with Insulin)
multi-line sql (goes back to semicolons)
Desc not all caps 3:25
Combining queries kind of shoe-horned in (covered a little more clearly in aggregation)
Aggregation
-must- have all group by clauses as select columns
edit at 4:20 incomplete
Joining Tables
don’t discuss different types of joins
implicit inner joins based on select * from table1, table2 where table1.id = table2.id;
Missing Data
Nice distinction between types of nested queries (static vs dependent on outer query)