linuszeuwts/sql_course

Course material for the Intro to SQL Course, including the textbook: The Necessary SQL, featuring MySQL and T-SQL.

Introduction to SQL

Textbook and course material, for the Introduction to SQL course, taught by Daniel Fryer.

This repository includes slides for the full 4-day course.

There is also a 2-day course. If you are attending the 2-day course, we won't cover all of the 4-day material, but you still get access to all of it.

Set up guides

For this course, you need to choose between T-SQL and MySQL. If you don't know which one you want, then consider this: if you are on Windows, T-SQL is the easiest to set up and use. If you are on macOS, then MySQL is the easiest to set up and use. Please do not leave the set up process to the last minute. Leave some time to iron out difficulties getting set up! Feel free to contact me if you need help. The guides below will help you get set up.

In my experience, it is best to do this on a personal computer, since some people have experienced difficulty getting set up on a work computer (e.g., if you don't have administrator rights).

• Set up your database with T-SQL (easiest for Windows): click here
• Set up your database with MySQL (easiest for macOS): click here

Textbook and slides

The textbook and slides are linked below.

• Course text (The Necessary SQL, featuring MySQL and T-SQL)
• Day 1 slides
• Day 2 slides
• Day 3 slides
• Day 4 slides:
  • Day 4 non-interactive pdf version
  • Day 4 interactive web version

Beginner R tutorial

R is covered in 4-day course, though we may have time for some R material during the 2-day course, depending on the audience. For beginner R programmers, day 4 may move a bit fast. This tutorial (by SwirlStats) will help you get prepared (or brush up). Right-click (or control-click) the link below, and choose 'save link as'. This will download the R script. Once downloaded, open the script in RStudio.

• Beginner R tutorial (R script)

If this is the first time you've used RStudio, I've created a video for you to guide you through using the above script.

• Brief intro to RStudio (video)

To be fully prepared for day 4, I suggest you complete all lessons from Lesson 1 (Basic Building Blocks), to Lesson 9 (Functions), of the Intro to R course, within the Swirl tutorial. You will see these lessons when you start the Swirl tutorial (also explained in the video linked above). I suspect this will take about 1 hour.

IDI Stuff

If you are working with the New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure (4-day course only), you may be interested in the links below.

• Day 3 slides include a section on the IDI
• The 'IDI Stuff' folder includes some useful papers and two data dictionaries
• Many more data dictionaries on StatsNZ DataInfo+ website
• A searchable list of variables available in the IDI