Minimum Viable SQL Patterns: Hands-On Design Patterns and Best Practices with SQL

by Ergest Xheblati

This is a book about advanced SQL Patterns. Patterns describe problems that occur over and over in our professional settings. A pattern is a like a template that you can apply to different problems. Once you learn each one, you can apply them to solve problems faster and make your code more readable and easier to maintain. Who am I I’ve been writing SQL for ~15 years. I’ve seen and written hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Over time I noticed a set of patterns and best practices I always come back to when writing queries. These patterns made my code more efficient, easier to understand and a breeze to maintain. Why did I write this book I have a background in computer science. As part of the curriculum we learn how to make our code more efficient, more readable and easy to debug. As I started to write SQL, I applied many of these lessons to my own code. When reviewing other people’s code I would often spot the same mistakes. Their queries were long, complex and slow. I would often have rewrite them just so I could understand what they were doing. I thought this was a known problem. So when people asked me how they could learn to do what I did, I looked around for a book or course that taught these patterns but couldn’t find one. I decided to write it myself and the result is this book. Is this book for you? This book is for anyone who is familiar with SQL and wants to take their skills to the next level. I don't cover any of the basic syntax here so make sure you have that down pat. I expect you to already know how to join tables and do basic filtering and aggregation. If you find that your SQL code is often inefficient and slow and you want to make it faster, this book is for you! If you find that your SQL code is long, messy and hard to understand and you want to make it cleaner, this book is for you! If you find that your SQL code breaks easily when data changes and you want to make it more resilient, this book is for you! What you'll learn in this book I'm a huge fan of project-based learning. You can learn anything if you can come up with an interesting project to use it thing in. I used a project when I taught myself data science. That's why for this book I designed an interesting and useful data project to organize it around. I explain each pattern as I walk you through the project. This will ensure that you learn the material better and remember it the next time you need to apply it.

154 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2022

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book that goes further than most SQL books in explaining how to build more complex and readable queries!

[Anna Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does exactly what it says it will. Great breakdown of patterns to decompose queries paired with clear and easy to follow examples. This goes on the reference shelf

[Lucille Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good little book talking about various patterns to create efficient, modular, and readable SQL code.