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is it possible to get advanced SQL knowledge in one day?

J

jingramm

Senior member
I've been talking with a recruiter and she pushed my resume to a company for an interview. Little did I know that they are mainly wanting someone with strong SQL skills. I have experience with it but not advanced level. I have written some complex queries in the past but I also had other resources around me to solve problems I didn't know in past jobs and I know I'll be asked in-depth questions.

Any good resources that will help me in the next 24 hours? I have a solid knowledge but not advanced.


Update: The interview didn't go well. The person told me they're looking for a SQL expert and laughed at my experience as I was very honest about it. I know I can do the job well if given a shot because I've had similar jobs that I excelled in (just not as much SQL but tech comes natural to me). Regardless, they should probably change the job title to SQL Developer from what they have now and pay accordingly to attract what they want instead of offering entry-level pay. The company is offering entry-level pay that recent college grads can get and expect to find a SQL expert. I have some other interviews lined up and hope to land a permanent role soon.
 
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Nope, not if you want an honest opinion.

Especially if you're talking about security ramifications of poorly implemented sql.
 
This is why we need Matrix-esq skills injections.

Stick a big ass needle in the back of my head, inject knowledge into me. DONE.
 
I'd go with no. You can still do well in the interview though. Be honest about your current knowledge and focus on your 'soft' skills that would let you adapt/learn quickly/tailor your solutions to their needs/communicate as you picked up the tech.
 
Learning basic database theory and basic SQL syntax can obviously be done in one day, but writing non-shitty queries is just something you're going to have to stumble through.
 
In all honesty though OP - SQL skills really aren't that amazing. However in the interview process I would never lie. The key is to always emphasize your passion and ability to learn something that you don't fully know.

Where SQL gets me is when people start making shit way too confusing where they combined queries inside of queries - and you're trying to track down what/how something is being calcualted.

I'm not sure what the normal is - and what the "proper" technique is if imbeding queries inside of queries is the standard, but it's ugly for me when I'm trying to track down calculations.
 
If you thoroughly understand numerous joins, stored procedures, and normal form, I can't think of anything terribly more advanced.

SQL is really pretty boring. Its baby sitting someone else's attic of data.
 
You're a bad fit for that job. You should accept that, decline the interview, and let the recruiter know not to push you for "advanced SQL" jobs in the future.
 
depends on how "smart" you are, you can learn everything you need to know about SQL in a day, but effortlessly reading a query with a billion joins takes a bit of practice. A monkey can write SQL, designing a database on the other hand, that's something you can study your whole life and still not get right every time.
 
Crusty said:
Usually anything that starts with SELECT *.
Click to expand...

Why? If you want to know all the fields you want to know all the fields? Of course, I guess I see your point - why would you want to see all fields if you are querying something... Still... What are you suggesting you should be using?


https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection
Since someone mentioned it, I took a look around for better understanding SQL Injections, quite interesting - actually - more interesting than learning actual SQL 😀

From what I can tell, SQL Injection is basically taking advantage of poor coding with lack of string checks to possibly manipulate data in ways that it was not meant to. Of course, other than somehow sending the variable (I guess thats where the "Injection" comes in) input in manually through the code somehow - I wouldn't know how this is normally done...
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
Oh geez you guys are just being Nazi now. If you want to query with a couple of simple WHERE's - are you honestly going to type out 28 field names?
Click to expand...

err, yes? you have heard of copy and paste right? You have to consider how much data you are fetching and thus processing time and iops associated with them. We are not just talking about the simple select statements with 1 table that has 400 rows.
 
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decline the interview, you'd be wasting both of your times. And tell your recruiter to find an actual fit for you instead of a keyword that pops up on your resume or fire her and get someone else, there's millions of them out there.
 
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