

Ask HN: What do they mean SQL? - arisAlexis

I see all these highest paying jobs&#x2F;skills to have and I am wondering. I have always programmed in different languages but I never really thought SQL is a language. Sure it is in a way, but you know like not a complicated one. You have joins,unions,some oracle stuff and some functions but hell, do people get 85k&#x2F;year to just write SQL code? Is there a profession SQL developer? Is this included in the Database Adminstrator job?
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flannell
I guess the acronym gives it away, Structured Query Language. Things can get
pretty hairy when playing around with triggers, indexes and foreign keys, not
just the SQL itself. I'd imagine for 85k you'd need to have experience in
replication and table partitioning. I also think the difference between a 25K
and 85K developer would be the difference in execution time of a SQL block of
code. It's amazing how much you can speed up queries by re-factoring the code
as well as knowledge of using different types of indexing strategies. I've
used SQL for 15 years, but not exclusively - it's always wrapped up with other
needed skills. HTH!

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arethuza
Most "database" developers I've known typically specialize in a particular
area (integration, optimization, design, BI) for a particular technology stack
(MS SQL Server, Oracle...) and sometimes even for particular applications as
well (CRM, ERP, etc.).

It's not just a case of knowing SQL - but understanding the wider landscape -
data models with thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of
tables are pretty common in some contexts.

