Cracking the Query: How To Think Like An SQL Expert

Forge a path to SQL mastery with these tips and tricks

Eric Kleppen
7 min readJun 23, 2023
Image created by author using Midjourney

SQL: A love story

A decade has passed since that fateful encounter, yet the memories remain etched in my mind. I was a wide-eyed Product Documentation intern at a software company, fresh out of college and eager to cut my teeth in the industry. I had just gotten assigned to the Ad Hoc Reporting Tools team, where I met Kristina. She was not only my first real friend at the company but also a wicked smart software developer who gave me my first taste of relational databases and structured query language (SQL), showing me the true power of data.

Since then, SQL has become an integral part of my professional identity — a skill that has carried my career into new fields and unlocked a passion for analytics. With each query I craft, I continue to refine my skills, forever driven by the allure of uncovering new insights and pushing the boundaries of what my SQL can achieve.

Now, armed with years of experience and a burning passion for data, I invite you to pull back the curtain and explore my tips and tricks for thinking like an SQL expert:

  • Go back to basics
  • Think in sets
  • Design sargable queries

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Eric Kleppen
Eric Kleppen

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