What percentage of people in your company can use SQL?
If you are an IT engineer, many people use SQL on a daily basis, but in other occupations, I think that there are many people who say, ” I can’t use SQL, so when I want data, I ask an engineer.”
However, if you can’t use SQL yourself, it can be inconvenient because it takes time to check data even though you want it right away. Also, for engineers, it is stressful to have multiple small data acquisitions inserted during development, or to have to start over because the data is different from what I expected.
Paiza used to be in such a situation, so we started to hold SQL study sessions for non-engineers. Currently, people in various occupations such as sales, planning, and secretariat use SQL by themselves.
Non-engineers may think, “I’m not an engineer, so I don’t know SQL!” Not asked. Rather, it is better to learn how to use basic SQL by yourself.
This time, I would like to talk about the disadvantages when non-engineers cannot use SQL, and the advantages when non-engineers can use SQL, referring to our company’s case.
■What is SQL in the first place?
SQL is simply a language for manipulating data in a relational database (RDB). By using SQL, we can issue commands to the RDBMS (relational database management system), store the necessary data in the RDB, and retrieve (display) the stored data.
Among them, MySQL is one of the most popular open source RDBMS in the world. It is free to install, fast and easy to use.
If you can use SQL, you can quickly obtain and view the desired data, such as when you want to see changes in the number of site visitors or when you want to display a list of monthly sales. Demand is increasing not only for engineers, but also for people in various occupations such as sales, planning, and marketing, as “skills useful for numerical analysis in business”.
■ What happened when there was no one other than engineers who could use SQL
At paiza, before the SQL study group started, that is, when non-engineering people could hardly use SQL, this kind of problem occurred.
◆ It becomes necessary to create a log tool for each project
Engineer (I wish I could focus more on service development if I didn’t develop log tools…)
Engineer (I wish I could learn SQL…)
Therefore, when we held regular in-house study sessions using paiza learning ‘s ” Introduction to DB/SQL “, the number of people who can use SQL even in non-engineering positions increased significantly, and the following benefits were obtained.
Advantages that non-engineers can now use SQL
◆ Each person can extract and analyze numerical values as needed
If the data acquisition is completely left to the engineers, they will ask “I want this kind of data”, stop the development work and have them acquire it… When they realize there is insufficient data, they will make another request, stop the work and acquire it. It often took a long time to get to the essential data analysis.
Now, people who have learned SQL and are chasing numbers are able to do everything from acquisition to analysis in one stop, so “the data I got from someone else was a little different from what I expected…” “I can’t get it!”
◆ You will be able to understand where and what kind of data is stored, and work with engineers will be smoother
Once I became able to write SQL and get the numbers I wanted to see, I started thinking about the project I was in charge of, such as “How detailed can I get the information and behavior transitions of visiting users as a log for the game content I planned?” You will be able to understand what is being visualized and what kind of data can and cannot be output.
Since I have a solid understanding of what kind of logs there are, even non-engineers can now accurately analyze and improve based on numerical values.
◆Engineers can concentrate more on development
This is perhaps the most important benefit…
■Summary
Demand for SQL is increasing, even for people in various occupations other than IT engineers, as a “skill useful for numerical analysis in business”, so there is no loss in learning it.
If you have never programmed before, you may think “it seems difficult…”, but the basic SQL syntax for fetching specific data from a DB that is already in operation and displaying it is not that difficult. is not.
First of all, you can easily start learning by writing SQL in an online environment, executing it, and trying out how to write it to see what kind of data is displayed.
In the past, when I wanted to study SQL, I had to set up the environment from scratch, build a practice DB, and finally write SQL. There used to be a lot of them, but recently , you can quickly learn to read and write basic SQL, and there are more learning contents that can be executed online.
