If you’re serious about programming, we’ve got one word for you: databases.
Databases and languages that are used to communicate with databases, like SQL, can handle significantly more data than spreadsheets and manage the back-end of most modern-day web applications. It’s like switching from a Honda Civic to a Ferrari. It’s faster, sleeker, and can handle whatever you throw at it.
So if you want a lucrative programming career (even the lowest paid SQL developers make upwards of $60,000 a year), it’s imperative that you learn a database programming language like SQL. But where do you start?
Luckily, there are tons of online courses that can help you master SQL without going back to school — like the Ultimate SQL Bootcamp. This bundle gives you lifetime access to nine courses and more than 500 easy-to-follow lessons. Whether you want to work full-time as an IT database administrator or work remotely as a freelancer, this bundle will teach you everything you need to hit the ground running and become an SQL-programming machine.
Here are the seven essential skills you will master:
1. Learn to structure a database The first step of mastering SQL: understanding what exactly a database is to begin with. Learn the ins and outs of database tables and relationships, and understand how to structure one from scratch.
2. Author SQL statements & clauses Once you understand the structure and building blocks of a database, it’s time to learn to extract the information you need using SQL queries. You’ll study a variety of statements and clauses, as you master the art of manipulating data to perform whatever task is at hand.
3. Manage a SQL database If you plan to pursue a career in IT or data science, you’ll want to learn how to manage a database and set it up for scalable growth. Learn to administer an SQL database and all the tasks that entail.
4. Work with popular database systems like MySQL and PostgreSQL While SQL is the language used to interact with databases, MySQL is a database management system used to actually store your data. Throughout the included courses, you’ll learn to work with MySQL as well as some other popular database management systems, so you can manage access, limit users, and perform other tasks that would be asked of a database manager.
5. Master PHP It’s rare to see MySQL without PHP mentioned in the same sentence. This popular open source programming language is used to interact with MySQL and knowledge of both these technologies will prepare you to tackle a wide range of projects.
6. Learn technical SQL data analysis for marketing SQL is particularly essential in the marketing field. It allows professionals to better understand user behavior and purchasing patterns, so marketing teams can successfully target return users as well as acquire new users.
7. Create a database using WAMP and SQL Use WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) and SQL to manage extremely large sets of data, often referred to as big data.
The Ultimate SQL Bootcamp normally costs $408, but you can get it for just $49, a savings of 87 percent. Buy it here.
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Nicole Cammorata is the Executive Commerce Editor at Mashable, where she helps to guide shopping coverage site-wide. A longstanding fan of the TLC show “Extreme Couponing,” she gets a little thrill every time we help our readers find a great deal and put money back in their pockets. (Take that, retailer behemoths!) During her time at Mashable, she’s built out the Shopping team from its inception, overseeing the development of our daily deals stories and the expansion into hands-on testing and buying guides. The thing she’s most proud of though is the team she has built, helping journalists grow and develop over the course of her nearly eight years here and empowering writers and editors to lead our coverage in ways that get bigger and more ambitious with each year. She received a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an MFA in fiction writing from The New School. She lives in Maine with her husband, their two young children, and a backyard full of flowers.