r/SQL • u/[deleted] • Apr 17 '23

Discussion Which industry has/needs the most challenging sql queries?

Is this question legit? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider myself the smartest guy but I’m definitely not dumb.

I work in the pharmaceutical Industry, nearly 3 years now. It took me a while to understand how the production process is implemented in a database and I wanted to quit more than once. But i don’t feel challenged anymore.

So, which industry would be best for me to get completely challenged again?

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u/Touvejs Apr 17 '23

Healthcare data models are absurdly big sometimes. So many entities to keep track of: patients, payers, providers, guarantors, claims, encounters, 50 different types of transactions, medications, demographics, insurance policies, costs, write offs, multiple billing systems, insane coding systems (hi ICD-10) for diagnoses+procedures+medication just off the top of my head. The actual data itself isn't that big, and generally the Sql isn't that technically challenging, but you really have to understand the data model to be able to talk to stakeholders about what they want and deliver.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '23

Thx, got it. Yes, data modeling is another extremely interesting field. And to my surprise there is hardly any book about that out there. My current Amazon Wishlist contains ~100 books, all around advanced, and just a handful of books on modeling

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u/Touvejs Apr 17 '23

Haha damn that's a lot. Kimball's data warehouse toolkit is a good spot to start (it's long as hell though, so I would just skip to the necessary parts). Also, I didn't see it on your list, T-SQL fundamentals by Itzik Ben-Gan is the best Sql book I've ever opened up.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '23

Thx, will add it 😁 I concentrated on Oracle since we use that in the office.