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  • About 70 min
  • 9 steps · 2 quizzes

SQL from Zero — Ask Questions of Your Data

A hands-on first lesson in SQL, the language for asking questions of data. Students query a small table of songs right inside the lesson…

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9 steps · 2 quizzes · about 70 minutes · open any step

  1. A table: rows and columnsStart hereData in a database lives in tables. A table looks like a spreadsheet: each row is one thing — here, one song; each column is one fact about every thing — its title, its year, its plays. Try it: tap a few cells, then press Run.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  2. SELECT: choose the columnsSELECT lists the columns you want, separated by commas. means all of them. Try it: tap column names to build the query and watch the other columns fade away. Then press rename with AS: title AS song gives a column a new name in the result.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  3. WHERE: keep only some rowsWHERE tests every row against a condition and keeps the rows where it's true. Text goes in single quotes: genre = 'Pop'. Numbers don't: year >= 2022. Compare with =, !=, <, >, <= and >=. Try it: run the examples.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  4. AND, OR, NOT and LIKECombine conditions: AND — both must be true. OR — at least one. NOT — flips it. LIKE matches a pattern: % is any text, is exactly one character. title LIKE '%love%' finds "love" anywhere in the title.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  5. ORDER BY and LIMIT: a top 5ORDER BY sorts the result: ASC smallest first (the default), DESC largest first. Sort by several columns with commas. LIMIT 5 keeps only the first 5 rows. Together they answer "top N" questions.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  6. Check: choose, filter, sortQuiz · 5 questions
  7. Aggregates: one answer from many rowsSometimes you want one number about many rowsInteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  8. GROUP BY: one row per groupGROUP BY genre sorts the rows into a pile per genre, and the aggregate runs once per pile: SELECT genre, COUNT() FROM songs GROUP BY genre; The rule: every column in SELECT must be in GROUP BY or inside an aggregate.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  9. Challenge: 5 questionsAnswer each question with a query. A ✓ appears when your result is right — the order and names of the columns don't matter.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min
  10. What's next: joining tablesReal databases split data into several tables — songs in one, artists in another — so each fact is stored only once. JOIN connects them through a shared column. Try it: press Connect, then Join.InteractiveHands-on · 6 min

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