8 Best Books for SQL [Beginners and Advanced Learners]

Structured Query Language, or SQL, is a programming language used to communicate with databases. It means that SQL is the language used for storing, retrieving and manipulating data from relational databases. If you’re an aspiring Data Scientist, you must know that SQL is one of the most crucial skills needed to become an expert. As a result, you may have a keen interest in finding the best books for SQL. the following blog post will provide you with some of the best SQL books for beginners and advanced learners. 

Best Books for SQL

SQL: Quick Start Guide- The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to SQL

If you’re a beginner in learning SQL, you must start with SQL Quick Start Guide- The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to SQL. One of the best SQL Books for beginners, the book would help you in building a foundation on the topic. Furthermore, it would strengthen your skills as you move forward in your SQL journey. Significantly, you will find learn not only concepts but also find many problems that may need to solve. Additionally, the book also provides step-by-step examples for you to learn and practice SQL queries. The topics covered in this book include the following:

• Relational databases and how they are structured
• Importance of SQL
• Fundamentals of SQL Syntax
• Learning complex SELECT statements

Sam’s Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes

Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes is the best book to learn SQL. The book helps in enhancing the competencies of the students aspiring to learn SQL in the most effective manner. Additionally, it includes twenty-two short and quick lessons, and you need to spend 10 minutes on each task. Accordingly, the various topics that the book includes our- use of joins, subqueries, stored procedures, cursors, triggers and table constraints. Significantly, the book teaches you simple data retrieval techniques to solve more complex problems. Here’s what you will learn from the book-

• Retrieving, sorting and formatting database content
• Using aggregate function to summarise data
• Join two or more tables
• Insert, update and delete data
• Create and alter database tables

SQL All-in-One for Dummies 

SQL All-in-One for Dummies is another one of the top SQL books for Beginners. A guidebook written by Allen G. Taylor, this book clearly explains what SQL and relational databases is. Additionally, you will also learn about designing, developing and maintaining databases in SQL. If you’re a beginner in SQL, you will find this book the most useful. Moreover, if you’re a Data Science enthusiast, then this is the best SQL book for Data Science. Evidently, the book will work as a reference guide while you are practically working with SQL. The covers topics which include the following-

•   SQL queries
•   Database security
•   Error handling
•   Database and query tuning
•   SQL programming
•   XML
•   JSON.

Head First SQL 

Another SQL book for beginners is Headfirst SQL which is enriched with all the important topics that you will need to learn from scratch. Effectively, the book teaches you the basics of SQL and includes all the concepts that will help your brain learn quickly. Therefore, the database manipulation to indices, joins, and transactions, this book covers it all. Accordingly, when you finish studying and learning from this book, you will also need to practice by writing SQL queries and joining data. Significantly, the book has been made extremely challenging, interesting and exciting to learn and develop your skills. The book includes-

• SQL queries
• Simple to advance database manipulation
• SELECT and DELETE Queries
• Smart Table Design
• Multi-table database design
• SQL Joins
• And more

Learning SQL by Alan Beaulieu

After you learn all about the basics of SQL and have gathered experience practising basic-level SQL skills, it’s time for you to learn advanced SQL. Accordingly, the book by Alan Beaulieu on Learning SQL is an advance level book where you learn interactions of the datasets with queries. Additionally, you also learn about the need and importance of subqueries. Significantly,  only does it covers the basics of SQL, which will help you revise your skills, but it also contains advanced features. These are-

• SQL data statements to generate, manipulate and retrieve data
• Creating database objects
• Converting and manipulating data with SQL’s built-in functions
• Conditional logic in data statements

SQL Cookbook 

SQL Cookbook is one of the best books to learn SQL for gaining advanced and hardcore skill development in the language. Furthermore, you will find learning various advanced SQL techniques shared by highly experienced SQL developer Anthony Molinaro. Apparently, these techniques would help you become an expert-level SQL programmer in the market. Additionally, being the best SQL book for Data Science, you would familiarise yourself with concepts on window functions, database features, etc. Moreover, you will also learn-

• · Complex questions, fixing questions, preparing data, manipulation, grouping and reporting.
• · SQL-PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators, oracle’s MODEL Clause and PostgreSQL’s GENERATE_SERIES functions which are specific database features.
• · Window functions, pivoting rows and columns, reverse-pivoting columns into rows.
• · Creating histograms, generating running totals and subtotals, etc.
• · Walking string to use SQL for parsing through string characters, words or delimited elements.

SQL Practice Problems 

If you aspire to become a Data Scientist with advanced skills in SQL, you need to have experience in solving real-world issues and problems. Accordingly, the best SQL book for you is SQL Practice Problems. Significantly, the book helps you learn to analyse data problems, figure out fundamentals, etc. you will find 58 practice problems within the book, which require you to follow step-by-step to solve the problems. Moreover, solving complex level problems would help you to improve your capabilities in writing high-level SQL code. The book follows the method of learning by doing. Effectively, this would allow you to solve the most common problems that you might be dealing with data and help you learn unique techniques to solve them. Accordingly, whether you want to become a Data Scientist or a Data Engineer, learning SQL will help you solve real-world problems easily.

SQL for Data Analytics

SQL for Data Analytics is another one of the best SQL books for beginners and advanced learners. The book consists of not just numerous concepts and learning techniques on SQL, and it also offers you multiple practice problems. The book presents itself in the friendliest language allowing you to understand concepts and learn from a real-time instructor. From the fundamentals of SQL to advanced-level concepts, the book covers it all. If you’re a Data Scientist who wants to expand your skills in SQL, the book will provide you with useful tips. This is the best book to learn SQL, especially for experienced professionals, which will enhance your skills in optimising queries, manipulation, and extraction of data from large datasets. You will learn to use SQL for analysing complex data and fine-tuning queries and it will help you through case studies to visualise end-to-end data analytics processes.

Wrapping Up! 

The above blog presents some of the best SQL books for beginners and advanced learners. Based on your level of experience or your professional expertise, you may choose from these books to develop your knowledge and skills in SQL. These best books for SQL will help you through your technical journey in becoming a Data Scientist, Data Analyst or even a Data Engineer. Remember, you should not just read the books but also engage in solving practice problems the books present to develop your practice experience.