Advanced SQL Courses for Data Analysts – A Complete Review

Updated on: May 20, 2024

Even data analysts who already know SQL need to keep their skills sharp. Where can you find the best advanced SQL courses for data analysts? Check out our review of the top online sources!

If you're like me, constantly looking to keep those SQL skills in tip-top shape, you might be wondering where to find the best advanced courses tailored for data analysts. Well, I've got you covered! I recently explored some top-tier online courses that really push the envelope on what you can do with Structured Query Language.

In my latest guide, I’ve listed some fantastic online SQL courses specifically geared toward data analysts. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill lessons; they're about mastering the art of tackling complex data challenges with the latest SQL techniques, all via highly reputable platforms.

Don’t put off improving your skills any longer. Check out my detailed review now and find the ideal course to elevate your SQL game.

8 Advanced SQL Courses for Data Analysts

Let's take a closer look at these courses to decide which platform will be better for you in learning SQL. I’d like to be impartial, so the courses are listed in random order.

SQL Reporting (3-course path)

What’s inside? Everything you need to know to write your own SQL reports from scratch.

LearnSQL.com provides a lot of SQL tracks. You can start with the basics and work through to more advanced courses. The SQL reporting path assumes you have basic SQL knowledge; it shows intermediate and advanced users how to create many kinds of reports using just SQL. (This track can be done in standard SQL or SQL Server.)

Creating Basic SQL Reports / Creating Basic SQL Reports in SQL Server 

Learn how to analyze key metrics of your company and become a more effective analyst. After completing this course, you’ll be able to create SQL reports, organize long queries, include multiple metrics in a single query, and operate on a database with several tables. You’ll also learn how to use aggregate functions to summarize data and calculate total amounts. The course further covers classifying data using GROUP BY and CASE WHEN.

Revenue Trend Analysis in SQL / Revenue Trend Analysis in SQL Server

This course includes 60 interactive exercises. It will take you about 10 hours to complete. You’ll learn to use SQL to analyze revenue trends and create a wide range of revenue reports. You’ll also find out how to analyze the customer life cycle and choose acquisition mechanisms to create profit. You’ll also see how SQL can teach you more about conversion and churn.

Customer Behavior Analysis in SQL Server

This course is based on SQL Server engine, but you don’t need to install anything; LearnSQL.com lets you do everything through the browser. This course will show you how to analyze customer behavior and measure acquisition, conversion, sales, and churn. It should take you about 12 hours to complete the 73 interactive exercises. These skills go beyond the classic role of data analyst and enter the domain of money and business.

A nice feature of these courses is that hints are there to help with difficult tasks. You can also count on the support of the LearnSQL community, which includes learners and experts. It’s worth noting that the examples from the exercises are based on scenarios similar to real business situations.

SQL Server - Master Class For Data Analysis

What’s inside? If you don’t know OUTER APPLY, ROLLUP, LAG, the different types of SQL JOINs, or what a running total is and how to use it, this course will show you.

Udemy’s SQL video course for data analysts is quite interesting. The main requirement is having the SQL Server engine on your computer; you’ll need it to solve tasks. The exercises are based on SQL Server 2014 Express.

You don’t need to know SQL fundamentals before starting this course. In the first chapters, you’ll be introduced to basic SQL, making this course good for beginning and intermediate SQL users.

First, you’ll discover how to download and install SQL Server 2014 and how to navigate the Management Studio. The next chapter explains basic SELECT queries. Then comes the time for all kinds of JOINs, like INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN, FULL JOIN, CROSS JOIN, and self-joins. You‘ll also learn about quantitative analytics functions and the CASE-END statement.

This course allows you to create projects using analytical functions. More advanced concepts, like cohort analysis or customer acquisition analysis, are also discussed.

The last chapter is about creating databases and tables, casting data types, using and updating views, deleting rows from the database, and importing data from files.

This video course takes about 7.5 hours and you’ll get a certificate of completion when you finish it. There are options to view courses on your mobile device or smart TV. At the time of writing, the price is $10.56 for lifelong access to the course.

Advanced SQL for Data Scientists

What’s inside? An advanced-level course for data scientists and analysts, covering all kinds of handy SQL functions and techniques.

This video course from LinkedIn Learning is intended for data scientists or data analysts who have some SQL knowledge. The course is good for intermediate to advanced SQL users; in the first section, the author explains the ANSI standard and how to install the PostgreSQL server. He also leads you to more advanced topics (like SQL’s statistical functions, string functions, and numeric functions).

You will discover subqueries, learn how to order records and use regular expressions and advanced aggregations. Towards the end of the course, window functions and data preparation (for analysis) is also covered.

You can download the course’s exercise files; this is a bit different than some of the browser-based courses, which don’t require you to download anything. In my opinion, the browser-only approach makes learning much easier and more enjoyable.

The course is based on PostgreSQL and takes about 1.5 hours to finish. You can buy the course outright for $54.99 or purchase a monthly ($30) or yearly ($300) subscription to LinkedIn Learning. There’s also a free month-long trial of the platform.

SQL Advanced

What’s inside? An online course for people that need to extend their reach into Oracle SQL’s more advanced concepts.

This Udemy course is based on Oracle SQL. The first chapter walks you through installing Oracle, JDK, and SQL Developer software. Then you’ll learn how to manipulate data with virtual columns, multi-table inserts, and merges.

Next, you’ll get into analytical functions, hierarchical queries, and how to transform data with the CASE statement and PIVOT, LISTAGG, and UNION. You’ll also learn about GROUP BY extensions like ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING.

At the end of the course, the authors focus on partitioning tables, materialized views, regular expressions, and flashback operations.

This course is 4.5 hours of video for data analysts and programmers. At the time of writing, the price was $10.56 for lifetime access. And you’ll get a certificate for completing it.

Intermediate SQL Server

What’s inside? An intermediate-level SQL Server course for data analysts who have fundamental SQL skills and want to learn how to use statistical, aggregate, and mathematical functions.

What would you learn in this DataCamp course? First, you’ll learn how to deal with missing data and how to work with dates. Next, you’ll see how to use statistics in data analysis. You’ll get to know data aggregation, the CASE statement, and how to use math functions to perform various calculations. The third section teaches you how to create variables, use LOOP WHILE, and work with derived tables and Common Table Expressions. The last section introduces you to window functions in SQL Server.

This course takes 4 hours and includes 14 videos and 47 exercises. In my opinion, the DataCamp platform could be improved, but it meets the basic requirements and gives the user what they need to complete the course.

You need to register on the DataCamp platform to take this course. An individual subscription is $25 per month; the premium subscription ($33.25/month) offers access to additional content. For teams, the Professional subscription costs $25 per user per month (minimum of 5 users, billed yearly).

Advanced SQL

What’s inside? A free four-hour course that helps beginners further their SQL skills.

I liked this SQL course from Kaggle. It contains four lessons. The first provides information on combining data from different tables using JOIN or UNION. The next lesson focuses on performing complex calculations with analytical functions. The third lesson explores nested and repeated data in BigQuery. Finally, the last section provides hints on how to write effective queries. You can write these online, as part of the platform.

Advanced SQL for Data Science: Time Series

What’s inside? A three-part overview of time series data analysis.

This is another SQL course from LinkedIn Learning. It is also intended for advanced SQL users, especially for data scientists and data analysts.

In the first chapter, you’ll learn about time series data. Next, you’ll see how to install PostgreSQL to solve course exercises. You’ll uncover the difference between sliding and tumbling window calculations and you’ll understand how to model this type of data with indexing and partitioning.

In the last two chapters, you'll read about frequently used times series features. You’ll also learn how to analyze this data. Finally, the course touches on linear regression forecasting.

The course is based on PostgreSQL and takes about 1.5 hours to finish. You can buy the course outright for $39.99 or purchase a monthly ($30) or yearly ($300) subscription to LinkedIn Learning. There’s also a free month-long trial of the platform.

SQL for Business Analysts (5-course path)

What’s inside? A detailed look at SQL as used in business analysis.

DataCamp’s offerings include, among others, an SQL learning path dedicated to data analysis. If you are an SQL specialist, consider checking this option out. Here are the courses included in this path:

Exploratory Data Analysis in SQL

This is the first course. It defines what a database is and how to read a database diagram. You’ll also learn about database keys, how to join tables, and how to use or change data types. In addition, this course covers summarizing data, exploring distributions, generating series, using correlation, creating temporary tables, and operating on strings and unstructured text data. It also teaches you how to deal with inconsistencies, spacing, and delimiters in your data. The last chapters demonstrate how to operate on date and time data using aggregations and time series. The basics are quite well described here.

Data-Driven Decision Making in SQL

The second course in this path starts with an introduction to business intelligence via the GROUP BY and LEFT JOIN statements. It also shows you how to write subqueries based on customer preferences. You’ll learn nested and correlated nested queries and how to use EXISTS, INTERSECT, and UNION to categorize data. In the last part of the course, you’ll discover OLAP SQL queries and the ROLLUP and GROUPING SETS commands.

Applying SQL to Real-World Problems

In this part, you will have the chance to put your knowledge into practice and learn how to avoid common mistakes.

Analyzing Business Data in SQL

This course will teach you about key performance metrics. You will learn how to calculate revenues and costs using common table expressions. Later, you'll learn how to write SQL queries to calculate metrics and generate reports. There’s a lot of useful knowledge for data analysts here.

Reporting in SQL

The last course in this path is all about creating complex reports using the concepts and functions from previous courses. It includes some more advanced techniques for calculating report values.

It should take you about 20 hours to complete this course. You’ll need to register on the DataCamp platform; an individual subscription is $25 per month.

Advanced SQL Practice (4-course path)

Last on my list is this awesome online course. Everybody needs as much SQL practice as possible, and this course offers a comprehensive set of exercises designed to master advanced SQL concepts and techniques.

What's inside? This course track is designed for those who want to deepen their understanding of SQL through extensive, hands-on practice.

The track focuses on advanced SQL features like window functions, GROUP BY enhancements, and Common Table Expressions (CTEs), providing a solid foundation for intermediate to advanced learners.

The Advanced SQL Practice Track includes a series of challenging exercises that simulate real-world data scenarios, allowing learners to apply SQL techniques in practical contexts. For instance, you will analyze customer behavior and purchase patterns using data from a fictional online store, delve into website traffic data from a fictional pet store, and work with a family tree dataset to understand relationships using recursive queries.

These exercises are designed to not only reinforce theoretical knowledge but also to enhance your problem-solving capabilities in SQL.

You’ll get to practice complex queries and data manipulation, including the use of advanced window functions for analyzing time-series data, generating reports, and performing month-to-month comparisons.

Who should enroll? This track is ideal for data analysts, programmers, database administrators, and anyone involved in data handling who seeks to master SQL's more intricate functionalities. It's especially beneficial for those who want practical experience with the complexities of modern SQL beyond traditional coursework.

Prerequisites: Participants should have a good understanding of basic and intermediate SQL concepts, such as GROUP BY and CASE statements, as well as familiarity with window functions and CTEs. An internet connection and a web browser are the only technical requirements.

Which is the Best Online SQL Course for Data Analysts?

In this article, I have collected what I think are the best online SQL courses for data analysts who want to broaden their SQL knowledge. If you’re looking to develop and improve your skills (and increase your market value), check these courses out. You may also want to read these articles:

• This Advanced SQL Course Will Boost Your Career!
• Advanced SQL Practice: 10 Exercises with Solutions
• How to Practice Advanced SQL Online with LearnSQL.com

Of course, there are many more offerings out there. The decision of which one to choose is yours.