Hi guys,

I have been learning SQL on and off over the past few months and recently just completed a few courses including joins on DataCamp.

Once a course is completed, you are 'awarded' a certification of completion. Are these certs worth putting on your LinkedIn profile under 'Licenses & certifications' and resume when applying for jobs or is this essentially useless?

When applying for jobs, some online applications ask for linkedin profile url. Again, would these datacamp certs be worth placing on your linkedin and resume since it 'proves' that I know SQL joins as well as just general visibility for recruiters for example or should I just leave this off since it does not count for actual real world experience, etc.?

What has been your general experience with this? Graduated w/ a BS in Biology from a few years back and currently work a non-IT related job in healthcare right now but am looking to potentially transition into an analyst role and I live in/near a very large city in the USA by the way if that matters.

Thanks for any feedback/advice I can get on this, greatly appreciated in advance!!

So I’ve been going over datacamp and have completed the intermediate sql and the course on Joins etc but recently I tried taking a test for a product firm that required SQL and most of the questions were on joins but I just scored a 12/22. Additionally I am trying to solve the intermediate questions on hackerank related to SQL and I am failing to do so. The basic ones were pretty easy.

I am wondering what resources I should look at to relearn SQL or maybe datacamp gets better as I progress? Idk. So far it seems to gloss over a lot of concepts but there is a lack of application. Or maybe I’m not very good at this and should just stick to corporate finance :/

I'm graduating from college next May and wanted to strengthen my SQL skills.

There isn't a strong program at my college, so planning on doing self-learning

How long did it take you guys to get the associate certificate for Sql on datacamp? I’ve just finished the joining data section, wanna get a grasp on time. I started about 4 months ago

Help to fix this issue?

I registered for the Data Analyst Professional certification and I've just finished the first exam on SQL and Statistics. The problem is I found a BUNCH of questions on SQL that I had seen nowhere in either courses or skill assessments. How is one supposed to prepare for this??

I've done the Intermediate SQL, Data Manipulation with SQL and Joining data in SQL as well as the Data Management in SQL (Postgresql) assessment twice (got a 97th percentile score)... but still, nowhere did I see most of the functions or techniques they asked in the exam like:

pg_typeof(), regexp_replace (), stddev(), percentile_cont() WITHIN GROUP (), coalesce(),
stuff like:
UPDATE
table
SET 
condition
...

I feel like they asked more things that were NOT covered in the courses/assessments than those that were.

I worry since now I'll move on to the DA201 exam and I don't want to feel blindsided again. How can I prepare?

Btw, and perhaps I'll do a different post for this question, is it cheating if you open resources like notes or search engine while on the exam?? I would assume it is.. but I doesn't say so anywhere and my screen wasn't being recorded during the first exam.

I keep getting all of the tasks correct except for 1 section of Task 1 where it tells you to return the columns of a certain table after replacing missing values with unknown etc.. I do DISTINCT to see whats going on and say one column has a data type of integer but there are no missing values that are NULL just say '-' as a string so I replace those values. Everything is returned using coalesce or case statements to replace missing values with the correct ones and making sure the final data types match the schema but it keeps saying I don't get it right. Here is one picture for example. Is there some trick I'm not getting behind the initial cleaning task 1 for these Associate SQL Certification practical exams?

I attempted the Associate Data Analyst certification. Easily passed the test. Was able to complete the four tasks on the YumYum dataset and all of the checks passed except the first data validation - I forget the exact message but it said that required data didn't exist. Really frustrated I went searching here and elsewhere to try to figure out what was missing, but never could get it fixed.

So I though hey, let me try the Associate SQL certification, maybe I'll have more luck. Again, easily passed the test. Then had the hotel operations dataset. Again, pretty straightforward stuff, but for some reason, Task 1 failed on... you guessed it! Data VALIDATION!!! ugh. I really wish they would give more feedback on what is missing. I replaced all missing values as instructed, ran SELECT distinct on all columns to check for oddities and fixed them. Checked columns types. Just cannot figure out what was required.

I'm comforted knowing this is really just a 'for fun' exercise for me as I'm already employed as a Sr Data Analyst, but it is seriously annoying as a very Type A person to get a failure and not know what the desired solution is.

Would anyone recommend the datacamp for beginners? I saw that they're having a sale currently and was thinking about getting to learn SQL. Thanks

As the post says - the Datacamp certifications are a total joke, they are very simple problems with very simple solutions. But Datacamp tries to trick us by not giving proper instructions in the questions OR being very finicky with the correct solutions that are provided by us.

I have successfully passed their SQL Associate certification and it was a mess too. I recently tried their DE Associate exam, I completed all the tasks successfully except the last task as the question's language is not correctly worded to confuse the student. And now I have to wait 14 days to re-take the entire exam again because of 1 task (last task) - a simple JOIN with a GROUP BY COUNT that their solution checker didn't accept. Their solution checker and question wordings are ambiguous and confusing on purpose.

I have completed all course for the Data Analyst Career Track Python. I was going to take the Associate Data Analyst Certification Tests (DA101 and DA501P) but just realized it is based off of SQL.

For those that have have taken and passed the exam (DA101) and practical exam (DA501P), how did you prepare? Did you do all 11 courses in the Data Analyst - SQL? I was thinking about taking just the first 4 courses.

Thanks!

Hey guys, I'm so confused as to why i'm not passing any of the tests. Honestly, I've tried so many things.

This is my notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1-Xc-hmUW0aWKr3EoU6YYHnkSTlJWDmZu?usp=sharing

Is it worth getting a SQL certification? Are there high paying jobs it would open up for me( 6 figures and up) ? . I currently work as a data analyst and use SQL quite a bit and working on finishing up an advanced SQL course. Figured since I’m taking the course maybe I should try to get a certification when I’m done.

I'm teaching myself SQL and following a DataCamp skill track specifically for SQL. I'm about 50% through the track and currently working on subqueries, correlated queries, and CTEs.

At first, it was relatively easy, and I could follow along with JOINs and CASE statements. But now, I feel completely lost and don’t understand what I’m doing. I can still complete the exercises (with a bit of help from ChatGPT), but it feels more like guessing than actual understanding. In fact, I often have to ask ChatGPT to explain the solutions to me, because even when I get the exercise right, I don’t understand why it’s correct.

Is it just me, or is this platform not very effective for learning code? It doesn’t engage me, nor does it explain when something is useful or why I should approach problems in a certain way. The exercises are dry and consist of fill-in-the-blank questions. There's no context for what I’m trying to uncover in the data, and no explanations are provided for the solutions.

I find it hard to fully articulate what the problem is, but I hope this makes sense. I’m feeling stuck with the platform, and while I’m at 50% completion, I don’t want to give up just yet. Do you know of any more engaging alternatives? I don’t just want to learn the syntax—I want to be able to write the code on my own, by figuring out the solution to a problem, rather than just filling in the blanks.

I’ve enjoyed SQLZoo, but it feels too basic for where I am now.

I am both a practitioner in the field and an adjunct/participating faculty member in a graduate program for data analytics. The curriculum committee is pretty heavy on getting a SQL certification, and I agree in the sense of having students do some self-paced learning on SQL to prepare them for the course meetings in my class that use SQL.

Long ago, I did the Microsoft SQL certification. That's dead now. It seems that the offerings now are all subscription-based. I have looked at Coursera and DataCamp. Coursera flat-out told me they do not do anything outside of subscriptions, and I'd have to pay $399/year/student just to get access to the SQL for Data Science cert.

DataCamp at least seems to have offerings for educators and I'm waiting on my educator account to get activated.

Listen, I agree in practice that certifications are less attractive than experience. But I have a reason for assigning this inside of our program. Coursera is a big bait-and-switch. DataCamp has yet to be seen. Any other suggestions?

can someone please help me out. i feel really frustated. can someone tell where i went wrong? i got all of the conditions correct except for the third condition on task 1

https://github.com/sadanddan/DC-Practical-Exam-Tries/blob/main/sql_associate%201.ipynb

I’m in the middle of finishing Coursera Google Data Analytics course & would love to add another SQL-related course to supplement my learning. I feel that GDA is not is not in-depth enough to equip me in building a decent portfolio. For now I want to focus to get more in-depth skills on SQL. Which one is the most recommended platform between Coursera UC Davis SQL or DataCamp for its practicability? Any suggestions / thoughts would be much appreciated! - A little bit about my background: I’m on the self-taught path trying to break into Data Analytics. Currently on a career break while transitioning out from tech sales. Thanks!

I see there is a career track on DataCamp for SQL. It is data Data Analyst with SQL Server. It looks to focus on Microsoft SQL server and using Excel as well. This one looks to be 40 hours as it gets into Database design.

There is another that is just a SQL Fundamentals course that teaches PostgreSQLthat is part of the larger Python and R data analyst tracks. It looks to include less being around 22 hours or so.

I don’t really know enough to know the differences or benefits of either, or what differs between PostgreSQL or the T-SQL used by Microsoft.

I plan on solidifying my SQL knowledge as I have completed some tutorials on sql basics going back 6 months.

My goal is to create a data project portfolio using SQL, Tableau(which I am also taking courses for) and Excel in order to display this as a link on my resume to show what I know. My end goal would be to at-least land an entry level job as a data analyst. I have also started learning some Python.

Does anyone have recommendations of which track I should focus on? Or any other recommendations of outside courses I should take instead of DataCamp? Is it recommended? From what I have been reading companies only care what you can do with those skills? Which is why I would like to set myself apart with a portfolio.

I just want to ensure I build a solid foundational knowledge and I don’t know the best way to go about doing that. I see a lot of jobs that require SQL, but really don’t know which flavor to take up.

Any advice is very appreciated.

My company is willing to pay for me to take a course or certification to learn SQL (I currently just have advanced excel knowledge). I know there are tons of cheap (or relatively cheap options) like coursera or data camp - but if my company is willing to pay, I’d take advantage of a more structured setting. Does anyone have any classes or certifications they have taken for SQL that they would recommend?