What is SQL?

SQL stands for structured query language.  SQL is most students’ first experience with a database. My first experience was Access.  Before Access, I had an Excel class.  Excel spreadsheets were revolutionary in its time because it organized data when no other program could. I feel like I worked my way up to SQL. They are all methods, created by Microsoft, to organize data.

SQL is the most efficient way to organize complex data. It is a relational database.  All of the information in the database is related. Information is divided into tables and rows. There can be hundreds of tables and rows that relate to one another.  A great example is the database for a mid-sized college. There are thousands of students and these students have classes. The classes have grades attached. Students’ home addresses and phone numbers are also there. These are named and categorized a certain way in the database. There are tables of keys.  We will find foreign keys. There are primary  and composite keys. Also in the chart are surrogate keys. There are natural keys as well.

A very important task to learn with SQL is how to backup and restore. We also have to run or execute queries. These are two important skills to master. There are others of course. However, if freelancing, this is extremely important. A great deal of the requests for freelance help centers around restoration. An example is that a company’s database has been corrupted. They need the database restored without losing any of its data. This is preferable of course. However, if this was not properly handled by the original database administrator, it may not be possible. This is why it needs to be backed up properly the first time. Restores are not problematic afterward.

All That Data

Forbes Contributor Adrian Bridgewater writes the following. “Smart cars and Internet-connected machines are starting to produce huge volumes of time-stamped data.  Companies need to collect and analyze [that] data.” “New software monitoring and measuring strategies have created enormous logs of events that need similar treatment. These trends account for the largest portion of data growth today. The data from these sources always has a core element of time that is crucial to any meaningful analysis. Many enterprises will realize they need a specific strategy for time series data to glean the full value of their business potential,” said InfluxData’s Kaplan.

SQL will handle the above analysis. The statement mentions “enormous logs of events” and that is SQL’s specialty. They will be a huge part of strategy revolved around data in the future.

Data Engineering

“A data engineer works with sets of data to advance data science goals. Unlike other roles, such as a data scientist, a data engineer is not generally as involved in overall strategic analysis. She is more deeply involved in working hands-on with the data sets.” ~ TechoPedia

Sometimes called a database Administrator or DBA, we usually use the programming language Python for scripting. We may also use R or Java.  More coding is involved in data engineering. More calculation is involved in data science.  I have taken a couple of programming classes, and it is encouraged to data engineers. We write the scripts for the data. SQL is the basis and programming is an essential part.

“Data engineers work with the life cycle of data sets to help make data useful to a project. Many are primarily interested in aggregating raw data and making it into useful, ordered and structured data formats.” ~Techoppedia

The Pay

The pay is solid.  It is an attraction of the career.  Glassdoor estimates the salary for data engineers in my area, the southest, at 70k-135k.  One can work remotely or at the office.  The freedom is great but the workdays can be long. Coding at a computer on a project is a marathon. It  does not matter if it is to write a program for a database or a website. The end of the project is satisfying and it is a  great relief. Afterward, you will move on to another project if you are freelancing. If working for a company and on salary, monitoring the build will be the job.

Freelancing and salary at a company are the main ways to earn a living using SQL.  However, there is no set industry that we must stay in to use our SQL skills.  We can work in marketing. Paper product companies need past, present and future (or predictive) data to grow. The same is true for the financial field. Market analysis is super competitive and the best tools must be used to get ahead and to stay ahead. Those tools include relational databases.

Growth in the Field

Keep learning and growing in the field. Mentors and advisors constantly remind us. SQL is always evolving and we have to evolve as well. It will take several classes and practice at home to master SQL.  We work on many projects on our own and those of our employers to master the trade.

Growth in this field can take us many places. Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. Data migration. Big data. Internet of things (IoT). These are all subsections of the field.  And they are pretty large subsections.

What are the tools that data engineers work with to achieve data visualization and other hot terms for this field to get comfortable with.  Linux. Hive. Spark. Hadoop. Red Hat. Ubuntu. Power BI. ETL. Presto. Phoenix. Drill. Spark SQL. Data Lake. Azure. Normalization. Query builder. When learning SQL, we should become familiar with these terms. Learning about these with create opportunities and open doors.

Always use a good solid computer for your programming journey. I recommend the following computers.

Alienware 17R4 Intel Core i7-7700HQ X4 2.8GHz 32GB 1TB+1TB SSD Win10, Silver (Renewed)

Microsoft Surface Pro 6 2 in 1 PC Tablet 12.3″ (2736×1824) Touchscreen, i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD w/Fingerprint Type Cover, Surface Pen, Dock, Mouse, Backlit, Webcam, Fanless, Win 10 – Black

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Credits:

Forbes: Adrian Bridgewater (linked above)

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

Glassdoor.com

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