Learning SQL Through Questions: How I Built My Understanding One Query at a Time

Introduction

SQL has always seemed simple — just SELECT and WHERE, right?
But today, as I asked question after question and fixed tiny mistakes, I realized SQL is all about clarity and logic. This post documents what I asked, what I struggled with, and how I improved my understanding one query at a time.

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The Problem

I didn’t set out with a big goal. I just wanted to:

• Filter data with conditions
• Sort and order results properly
• Count or match string lengths
• Understand how to work with table structure
• Use joins (later)

But the more I typed, the more I realized how fragile SQL syntax can be.

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My Questions

Here are some real questions I asked today:

• “How do I filter by year if the date format is Y-M-D?”
• “How do I find words that are exactly 5 letters long?”
• “Why is ORDER BY giving an error when I use it twice?”
• “How do I check the database name again?”
• “How do I load a .sql file into MySQL using DBeaver?”

Each question came from running into a block — and fixing it taught me more than any tutorial.

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What I Learned

1. Filtering by Year

You can use YEAR() function to extract the year from a DATE column.

SELECT * FROM orders WHERE YEAR(order_date) = 2023;

2. Finding 5-letter Words

Using LENGTH() or CHAR_LENGTH() helps:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(username) = 5;

3. Ordering Properly

SQL doesn’t allow multiple ORDER BY keywords. Use a single ORDER BY and list multiple columns:

ORDER BY title DESC, rental_rate DESC;

4. Database Info

You can run:

SELECT DATABASE();

5. Importing .sql File into MySQL via DBeaver

• Connect to your database
• Right-click → Tools → Execute SQL Script → Select your file

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What I Thought About

Today showed me that:

• SQL is readable, but that doesn’t make it error-proof
• Tiny syntax issues (like a second ORDER BY) can confuse you for a while
• You remember more when you fix real bugs, not just when you follow examples

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What I Want to Do Next

• Practice writing full queries for realistic datasets (like film or world)
• Try more subqueries and multi-table joins
• Use DBeaver’s ERD and export/import tools to navigate databases visually
• Create a cheat sheet of my most-used SQL snippets

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I didn’t build a full project today — but I built real confidence.
And sometimes, that’s more important than writing one perfect query.