SQL for Data Analytics: Perform fast and efficient data analysis with the power of SQL

by Upom Malik, Matt Goldwasser, Benjamin Johnston

Take your first steps to become a fully qualified data analyst by learning how to explore large relational datasets Understanding and finding patterns in data has become one of the most important ways to improve business decisions. If you know the basics of SQL, but don't know how to use it to gain the most effective business insights from data, this book is for you. SQL for Data Analytics helps you build the skills to move beyond basic SQL and instead learn to spot patterns and explain the logic hidden in data. You'll discover how to explore and understand data by identifying trends and unlocking deeper insights. You'll also gain experience working with different types of data in SQL, including time-series, geospatial, and text data. Finally, you'll learn how to increase your productivity with the help of profiling and automation. By the end of this book, you'll be able to use SQL in everyday business scenarios efficiently and look at data with the critical eye of an analytics professional. Please if you are having difficulty loading the sample datasets, there are new instructions uploaded to the GitHub repository. The link to the GitHub repository can be found in the book's preface. If you’re a database engineer looking to transition into analytics, or a backend engineer who wants to develop a deeper understanding of production data, you will find this book useful. This book is also ideal for data scientists or business analysts who want to improve their data analytics skills using SQL. Knowledge of basic SQL and database concepts will aid in understanding the concepts covered in this book.

386 pages, Paperback

Published August 23, 2019

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK. It is not really a generic SQL programming book as it has some thing that are specific to PostgreSQL. I think it is probably a better PostgreSQL book than a generic SQL book. Given its title, I thought it was more generic, which was a little disappointing. However, most of it was generic, although I skipped the last chapter as it seemed specific to PostgreSQL and a little beyond the scope of what I wanted to do. (Maybe I will read it at some future point.)

The book should explain how to get data into the PostgreSQL database in the first chapter as it is required for the exercises but it isn't covered until the third or fourth chapter. (I had to look it up on Stack Exchange.)

One annoying thing in the book was the author sometimes using archaic capitalization of SQL code, and sometimes not using it (the "as" was typically shown as lower case instead of caps). I realize the caps are not needed any longer, but it would be nice if there were internal consistency of how to display SQL code.

[Roberto · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book explains basics concepts of both Data Analysis and SQL.

It covers concepts such as types, I/O, query data from a DB, basic statitics concepts and how to use SQL to apply them, etc... Perhaps, and only perhaps, the most difficult and most interesting chapter is about efficient SQL queries with the PostGreSQL query analyser and indexes. However, it does not deepen into the matter very much. The last chapter, which pretends to be a recap of the entire book in the form of real use case, is entirely expendable. It does not offer much of what was already said and, as a real use case seems quite trivial.

Examples are okay and easy to follow. Exercises are in accordance with the examples. Once nice thing, particularly for beginners is that the exercises' solutions can be found at the end of the book.

Overall, I think it is a nice book for a beginner/intermediate (not quite) user, but a bit poor for more advance users.

3/5

[Jerrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a flashy book but a really good SQL resource especially for anyone prepping for a technical interview or learning SQL. There are not a lot of books that cover Common Table Expressions (CTEs) and optimizing queries through indexing and running EXPLAINS but this covers intro level to some great intermediate and slightly advanced concepts.

[linhpduc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suitable for beginners