Good introduction course to SQL for people who have no prior or limited knowledge about it. The lessons are well structured, with lectures and support material in each week. The instructor is knowledgeable, with prior experience working in the corporate world. It’s evident that he knows what is he talking about but does a great job by taking no assumptions while going through the lessons and I think that’s important to understand the concepts because sometimes people who are proficient in a subject take parts of it for granted and end up rushing through what they think are basic concepts and the students finish with no idea of what the instructor is talking about. This is not the case in this course and it’s helpful. Also, the speed is correct too, with pauses, clarifications and explanations of every concept that appears on the slides.
Few additional thoughts:
-There is no need to install additional software to follow the course as the practical assignments are made in a virtual environment, which is explained in the course. It’s good if you don’t want additional software running in your computer, but it has some limitations with SQL advanced commands.
-Some lessons and quizzes contain minor errors in the queries. Not a lot but there are a few, particularly in week 6.
-The course is taught in PostgreSQL, which is an open-source version of SQL. Although is similar to MySQL or MS SQL Server, it has particularities. The reasons for this choice and these differences are explained early in the course and the material is as standardized as possible to look like other SQL versions.
-The virtual environment has some particularities on its own and does not support advanced SQL commands like integrity. It’s a flaw, not a major one, but it’s present.
Breaking down the course, my rating would be:
Instructor: 5/5
Lessons & materials: 4/5
Learning by doing: 4/5
Virtual environment: 3/5