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SQLMastery Roadmap(2025 Edition)

Phase 1: Beginner Foundations (Core SQL)

Foundational Level

Learn syntax, querying basics, and understanding relational databases

Introduction to Databases

  1. 1. Database Fundamentals → What is a Database, DBMS vs RDBMS
  2. 2. Database Structure → Tables, rows, columns, schema
  3. 3. Key Concepts → Primary Key, Foreign Key, Constraints

Basic SQL Queries

  1. 1. Core Syntax → SELECT, FROM, WHERE clauses
  2. 2. Filtering Data → AND, OR, BETWEEN, IN, LIKE, IS NULL operators
  3. 3. Sorting Results → ORDER BY for ascending/descending sort
  4. 4. Limiting Results → LIMIT, TOP for result pagination

Aggregations & Grouping

  1. 1. Aggregate Functions → COUNT, SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX
  2. 2. Grouping Data → GROUP BY for categorical aggregation
  3. 3. Filter Groups → HAVING clause for filtered aggregations

Joins (Very Important)

  1. 1. INNER JOIN → Matching records from both tables
  2. 2. Outer Joins → LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN for inclusive results
  3. 3. FULL OUTER JOIN → All records from both tables
  4. 4. CROSS JOIN → Cartesian product of tables
  5. 5. Self Joins → Joining a table to itself

Set Operations

  1. 1. UNION → Combine results removing duplicates
  2. 2. UNION ALL → Combine results keeping duplicates
  3. 3. INTERSECT → Common records between queries
  4. 4. EXCEPT → Records in first query but not second
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 2: Intermediate SQL (Data Handling)

Intermediate Level

Advanced querying, data manipulation, schema management

Data Manipulation

  1. 1. Insert Operations → INSERT for adding new records
  2. 2. Update Operations → UPDATE for modifying existing data
  3. 3. Delete Operations → DELETE for removing records
  4. 4. Transactions → BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK for data consistency
  5. 5. Bulk Operations → Bulk Insert for multiple records

Constraints & Data Integrity

  1. 1. Column Constraints → NOT NULL, DEFAULT, UNIQUE
  2. 2. Referential Integrity → Primary & Foreign Keys
  3. 3. CHECK Constraints → Custom validation rules

Views

  1. 1. Simple Views → Virtual tables from queries
  2. 2. Indexed Views → Views with physical storage
  3. 3. Materialized Views → Pre-computed results for performance

Subqueries & CTEs

  1. 1. Scalar Subqueries → Single value subqueries
  2. 2. Correlated Subqueries → Row-by-row dependent queries
  3. 3. Common Table Expressions → WITH clause for readable queries
  4. 4. Recursive CTEs → Self-referencing hierarchical queries

Window Functions (Must Learn)

  1. 1. Ranking Functions → ROW_NUMBER(), RANK(), DENSE_RANK()
  2. 2. Running Calculations → SUM() OVER for cumulative totals
  3. 3. Lead & Lag → LAG(), LEAD() for time-based comparisons
  4. 4. Partitioning → OVER (PARTITION BY ...) for grouped calculations
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 3: Database Design & Schema Mastery

Advanced Level

Industry-ready schema design and normalization

Normalization

  1. 1. Normal Forms → 1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF, 4NF, 5NF progression
  2. 2. Design Goals → Why normalization matters, avoiding redundancy
  3. 3. Data Integrity → Ensuring consistency across tables

Denormalization

  1. 1. Performance Trade-offs → When to use denormalization
  2. 2. Design Decisions → Balancing normalization vs performance
  3. 3. Use Cases → Read-heavy systems, reporting databases

ER Diagrams

  1. 1. Entity Modeling → Entities, Attributes, Relationships
  2. 2. Cardinality → One-to-One, One-to-Many relationships
  3. 3. Complex Relations → Many-to-Many with junction tables

Indexes

  1. 1. Index Types → Clustered vs Non-Clustered indexes
  2. 2. Composite Indexes → Multi-column index strategies
  3. 3. Covering Indexes → Indexes that contain all query columns
  4. 4. Best Practices → When and how to index effectively
Phase 3
Phase 4
Phase 4: Advanced SQL & Optimization

Expert Level

Production-level query tuning and database performance

Query Optimization

  1. 1. Execution Plans → Understanding query execution paths
  2. 2. Cost Analysis → Cost-based optimization strategies
  3. 3. Query Refactoring → Reducing nested subqueries
  4. 4. Index Usage → Using indexes properly for performance

Transactions & Concurrency

  1. 1. ACID Properties → Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability
  2. 2. Isolation Levels → READ UNCOMMITTED, READ COMMITTED, REPEATABLE READ, SERIALIZABLE
  3. 3. Deadlock Management → Deadlocks and how to avoid them
  4. 4. Lock Types → Shared locks, exclusive locks, row-level locking

Stored Procedures & Functions

  1. 1. User-defined Functions → Creating custom UDFs
  2. 2. Stored Procedures → Parameterized stored procedures
  3. 3. Error Handling → Exception handling in stored procedures
  4. 4. Performance → When to use procedures vs inline queries

Triggers

  1. 1. Trigger Types → AFTER INSERT, AFTER UPDATE, AFTER DELETE
  2. 2. Use Cases → Audit trails, data validation, cascading updates
  3. 3. Risks → Performance impact, debugging challenges

Partitioning & Sharding

  1. 1. Partitioning Types → Horizontal vs Vertical partitioning
  2. 2. Table Partitioning → Range, list, hash partitioning strategies
  3. 3. Sharding Concepts → Database scaling across servers
  4. 4. Big Data → Handling large-scale datasets
Phase 4
Phase 5
Phase 5: Industry Ready Skills

Production Level

Work in production systems, integrate with applications

SQL in Different Databases

  1. 1. Database Variants → MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle differences
  2. 2. PostgreSQL Advanced → JSONB, CTE recursion, full-text search
  3. 3. Database Selection → Choosing the right database for use case

NoSQL & SQL Hybrid Knowledge

  1. 1. NoSQL Comparison → MongoDB vs SQL databases
  2. 2. JSON Support → PostgreSQL JSON queries and operations
  3. 3. Hybrid Approach → When to use SQL vs NoSQL
  4. 4. Polyglot Persistence → Using multiple database types

ETL & Data Engineering

  1. 1. ETL Concepts → Extract, Transform, Load with SQL
  2. 2. Data Pipelines → Using SQL in data pipelines
  3. 3. Python Integration → Pandas + SQLAlchemy for data workflows
  4. 4. Data Quality → Validation and cleansing in SQL

Analytics & BI Tools

  1. 1. BI Integration → SQL in Power BI, Tableau dashboards
  2. 2. Dashboard Optimization → Writing optimized queries for reporting
  3. 3. Time-series Analytics → Temporal queries and trends
  4. 4. KPI Calculations → Business metrics and aggregations

Big Data SQL

  1. 1. Distributed SQL → Spark SQL, HiveQL basics
  2. 2. Data Lakes → Working with partitioned tables
  3. 3. Columnar Formats → Parquet, ORC file formats
  4. 4. Query Federation → Querying across multiple sources
Phase 5
Phase 6
Phase 6: Expert / Industry Mastery

Mastery Level

Master complex real-world use cases

Advanced Performance Engineering

  1. 1. Index Tuning → Index tuning advisor, optimization tools
  2. 2. Caching Strategies → Database caching, query result caching
  3. 3. Query Optimization → Optimizing high-traffic queries
  4. 4. Monitoring → Performance monitoring and alerting

Security & Compliance

  1. 1. Access Control → Role-based access control (RBAC)
  2. 2. Row-level Security → Fine-grained data access (RLS)
  3. 3. Data Encryption → Encryption at rest and in transit
  4. 4. Compliance → GDPR, HIPAA, data privacy regulations

DevOps for SQL

  1. 1. Schema Migration → Database migrations with Liquibase, Flyway
  2. 2. CI/CD Pipelines → Automated SQL schema updates
  3. 3. Version Control → Git strategies for database changes
  4. 4. Backup & Recovery → Backup strategies, disaster recovery

Case Studies (Real World)

  1. 1. E-commerce Scale → Handling millions of records in transactions
  2. 2. Financial Systems → Optimizing financial transaction queries
  3. 3. Analytics Architecture → Scalable architecture for analytics
  4. 4. High Availability → Replication, failover strategies

Capstone Projects

  1. 1. Data Warehouse → Design & optimize Star Schema, Snowflake Schema
  2. 2. Reporting Dashboard → Build dashboard using SQL + BI tool
  3. 3. Large Dataset → Optimize queries for 10M+ row dataset
  4. 4. Production System → End-to-end database system design

🏆 Final Tips to Become Industry-Ready SQL Engineer

Congratulations! You've completed the SQL Engineer Mastery Roadmap and are ready to design scalable, robust systems.