SQL for Beginners: First Relational Database Project (Free)

This course is the fourth part of the SQL for Beginners series.

Before starting this course, you should have completed the earlier courses in the series or already possess equivalent SQL and T-SQL knowledge:

• SQL for Beginners: Setup & T-SQL First Steps (Free)
• SQL for Beginners: Introduction to SQL & T-SQL (Free)
• SQL for Beginners: First Simple Database & Queries (Free)

This course builds directly upon the concepts introduced previously and assumes you are already comfortable creating databases, tables and writing basic SQL queries.

This course follows the complete process of developing a relational database, from business requirements through to a fully implemented relational database. The emphasis is on database design, table relationships and understanding how a relational database is assembled, rather than providing comprehensive coverage of SQL or T-SQL syntax.

If you are looking for a course that teaches SQL and T-SQL syntax through a large number of standalone examples, this is not the right course. Instead, this course focuses on applying SQL and T-SQL to design, build and populate a complete relational database project from start to finish.

As a free introductory course, workshops are intentionally concise and focused. SQL workshop scripts are provided as downloadable resources, allowing more time to be spent understanding database design decisions, relationships, constraints and database implementation rather than typing large amounts of code from scratch. Students are encouraged to execute, modify and experiment with the provided scripts as they progress through the project.

Building tables is one thing. Building a relational database is another.

In this course, you will design and develop your first complete relational database project using SQL Server and T-SQL. Working through a realistic careers and recruitment system, you will follow the complete database development process from initial business requirements through to a completed relational database project:

Requirements → Gherkin Scenarios → Data Model → Table Design → Database Implementation → Data Population

Rather than working with isolated examples, you will see how business requirements evolve into data models, table designs, relationships and ultimately into a working relational database capable of storing structured business information.

You will begin by analysing business requirements and understanding how real-world systems are planned before any SQL is written. You will then explore Gherkin scenarios, data models, table designs and entity relationships before implementing the complete database structure using schemas, tables, primary keys, foreign keys, constraints and business rules.

This course also includes a comprehensive collection of supporting materials and project artefacts, including:

• Business Requirements Document
• Gherkin Scenarios
• Careers Database Data Model
• Table Design Specifications
• Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
• Workshop SQL Scripts
• Database Exercises & Challenges
• Solutions and Reference Materials

Once the database has been built, you will populate it with realistic sample data, resulting in a complete relational database ready for querying and reporting in the next course in the series.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• See how business requirements are interpreted and translated into data models, table designs and database structures.
• Understand how business requirements influence relational database design decisions.
• Create databases, schemas, tables and relationships using T-SQL.
• Implement primary keys, foreign keys and business constraints.
• Populate relational databases with structured data.
• Extend and evolve an existing relational database design.

If you are ready to move beyond individual tables and develop your first complete relational database project, this course provides the foundation for the final course in the SQL for Beginners series, where you will learn how to retrieve, filter and report on data from the relational database you have built.

Known Issues

The Create Careers Schemas workshop contains slightly stronger bass than the rest of the course due to an audio recording issue. The narration remains clear and fully understandable. This will be corrected in a future course update.