Community Comment: Part 5
The comments I provided in reaction to a community discussion thread:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6735773846621835264?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A6735773846621835264%2C6735821661179797504%29&replyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A6735773846621835264%2C6736015871510147073%29
Senior Data Analyst at UK marketing and advertising firm: A question to data science professionals: Do we need to learn every function of SQL out there? Or should we just focus on DML or should we also learn DDL, DCL, and TCL? Just today I read some instructions to install SQL tables, and I read a lot of SQL instructions that I am not too familiar with (especially related to database creations and/or granting users privileges). Makes me wondering if I should try to learn them or no need to bother. Does a data science professional actually need to know other SQL commands other than DML or just leave it to the database administrators? I would like to hear your perspective.
BI Developer at UK plant, tool, and equipment rental firm: I'd say it depends on whether you want to be a SQL user or a SQL expert. If you are going to use DML verbs like INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE it would really be of benefit to learn about transactions. If you don't know DDL, how are you going to build a new database or table. Are you going to wait for a DBA to create them before you can test your code? For me, if you want to say you know SQL, then you should know it all. Would you consider employing someone who knew half of python and not the other half?
Gfesser: So I would go even further. DBAs (database administrators) often aren't even the ones who create databases and tables, if "create" means writing the code. Typically, others write the code and DBAs (in firms where these still exist) will provide some level of governance prior to executing this code, if this work hasn't yet been delegated to database change management software as part of a DevOps pipeline. I'm in agreement here because I'm an advocate of end-to-end software development professionals regardless of whether the final product is focused on data. The introduction of unneeded dependencies will slow you down, so it's a good idea to pick up as many skills as possible.