What are Some Benefits of Using SQL?

We would highly encourage analysts to learn and use SQL. SQL is truly an analytics staple. It’s evident in the fact that nearly every analytics platform including SAS, R, Python, Alteryx, Power BI, Tableau, dozens of SQL platforms, and more have ways of running SQL code within their platform. SQL is one of the best ways to select, merge, modify, and aggregate data known to analysts. If your analytics team isn’t using SQL, it’s possible they’re relying on other coding languages like SAS, R, or Python; but, most likely, they’re relying on manual Excel clicks to manipulate data. While using Excel may seem easy and efficient the first time the data is manipulated, it can become inefficient and disengaging when needing to repeat these clicks over and over again in the future to refresh based on the latest data. It can also limit what kind of data manipulation is possible as more complex data manipulation may not be feasible in Excel.

It’s much better to code out data manipulation with a tool like SQL. The code only needs to be written once and can be scheduled to run/refresh automatically from there. Just about any kind of data manipulation is possible and relatively easy with SQL; while the idea of learning a coding language may seem daunting to many analysts who are used to using point-and-click tools like Excel and Alteryx for analysis, SQL is one of the easiest coding languages to learn, nothing like Java, C, etc…If needed, Value Driven Analytics can provide engaging training for your analytics team to help them learn SQL from scratch. This is a worthwhile investment as it can increase your analytics team’s efficiency and flexibility. Watch the video above to learn more about SQL!