

Looking for opinions from people who teach SQL  - samh

Thanks for reading...<p>I have an Excel add-in that allows you to preform SQL select in Excel (www.querycell.com)<p>It's been suggested to me that I should make a version specifically for people learning SQL.  So lots of tutorials, maybe register a www.learnsql.com like domain and really push it as an educational tool.<p>Question : Would you use a tool like this to teach SQL or recommend it to people learning SQL ?<p>IMHO :<p>Pros
 - Visual feedback (you can highlight/color rows that match your query)
 - Familiar comfortable environment for newbies
 - Possibly easier to set up in a night-classes or school environment than databses<p>Cons 
 - If someone is learning SQL they will eventually need to learn about a RDBMS so why not immediately
 - Excel has some stigma
======
ScottWhigham
Let me start off by saying that I think you have an awesome website and your
product is well marketed. That being say, no, I would not use this to teach
SQL nor would I recommend it to people learning SQL. And it's not because I
think you have a bad product; it's due to the fact that Excel is a spreadsheet
management tool, not a database.

I applaud your looking for innovative ways to market your product but this has
the potential to do harm to someone's career IMO. I can only imagine a job
interviewer's response when someone says they learned SQL using Excel. Excel
is not a database and, if you were to try to teach people SQL using a non-
database product, I think you are doing them a disservice. Same goes for
Google Spreadsheets or any other spreadsheet product. They aren't databases
and should not be confused with a real database. IMO "learning SQL" is not the
same thing as "learning how to write queries" yet that is what you imply with
this tool/question. I think the SQL community across all platforms would not
support it for these reasons.

Excel is a great way to learn what a column is and what a row is but it's a
horrible tool to learn what a table is, why you need a primary key, what
foreign keys are and do, or about the various data types. You cannot learn SQL
if you ignore those elements and Excel just does not do those well. Even
something as small as MS Access would be a massive improvement over Excel. You
don't need an RDBMS for SQL but you do need a DBMS that checks types and does
PKs/FKs or what's the point?

My background: I teach SQL Server for my company,
<http://www.learnitfirst.com/>, and have been teaching SQL since the '90s. I
think I have about 1600 SQL-based videos online at this time (if not more!).

EDIT: Removed certain items. Email if you want to hear them

