SQL Query Design Patterns and Best Practices: A practical guide to writing readable and maintainable SQL queries using its design patterns

by Steve Hughes, Dennis Neer, Dr. Ram Babu Singh

Enhance your SQL query writing skills to provide greater business value using advanced techniques such as common table expressions, window functions, and JSON Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook SQL has been the de facto standard when interacting with databases for decades and shows no signs of going away. Through the years, report developers or data wranglers have had to learn SQL on the fly to meet the business needs, so if you are someone who needs to write queries, SQL Query Design and Pattern Best Practices is for you. This book will guide you through making efficient SQL queries by reducing set sizes for effective results. You'll learn how to format your results to make them easier to consume at their destination. From there, the book will take you through solving complex business problems using more advanced techniques, such as common table expressions and window functions, and advance to uncovering issues resulting from security in the underlying dataset. Armed with this knowledge, you'll have a foundation for building queries and be ready to shift focus to using tools, such as query plans and indexes, to optimize those queries. The book will go over the modern data estate, which includes data lakes and JSON data, and wrap up with a brief on how to use Jupyter notebooks in your SQL journey. By the end of this SQL book, you'll be able to make efficient SQL queries that will improve your report writing and the overall SQL experience. This book is for SQL developers, data analysts, report writers, data scientists, and other data gatherers looking to expand their skills for complex querying as well as for building more efficient and performant queries. For those new to SQL, this book can help you accelerate your learning and keep you from making common mistakes.

270 pages, Paperback

Published March 31, 2023

Reviews

[Joe Michalak · Rating 3 out of 5]

First thing first, because it's not obvious - this is specific to SQL Server. I might not have chosen this book had I known that, but I decided to read it anyhow to see if the book would translate to general concepts. To an extent, they do.

The initial few chapters cover useful (and perhaps the most important part) about limiting the rows in the query. But after that, imporant topics like query plans, etc., are provided only precursory glances. This book is a beginner book pretending to be a bit more than that. Or it may be useful if you're moving from another system to SQL Server.