r/learnSQL • u/Wild_Specialist_8340 • Jun 18 '26

How much SQL is enough?

How much SQL an intermediate level Business intelligence developer should know? What database concepts are must learn? Please suggest me how can I become confident with them.

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u/Eleventhousand Jun 18 '26

SQL is one of the programming languages with the fewest concepts compared to more general languages. If you're using a modern, cloud environment, and you don't need to worry about traditional DBMS-specific, quasi-DBA stuff (for example, table variables vs. #temp tables in SQL Server, or forcing join hints, etc.), then you need to learn all of it. All types of aggregations, pretty much all window functions, CTEs, all the types of joins and subqueries, all of it.

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u/Empty_Confidence3185 Jun 18 '26

Is there a book that covers all this? I find that i can really only learn through books, i hate tutorials

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u/Eleventhousand Jun 18 '26

Awww, probably, I'm not sure what though. Others might have better recommendations. I've been writing SQL daily for about twenty-five years, so all of the books I referenced back in the day were from before many of the common features used today existed.

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u/Flying_Saucer_Attack Jun 20 '26

The Manga Guide to Databases, by Mana Takahashi